Malnutrition, Migration and Gender in Urban India

This book explores urban malnutrition in India with reference to Mumbai. With urbanization is noticed an underlying shift in demography of poverty and malnutrition to towns and cities, which deserves a holistic analysis. Accordingly, the book chooses to look at the status and determinants of nutrition insecurity in urban areas. The hypothesis is that females, due to continued presence of gender roles and migrants due to assimilation constraints in new environment are among the most vulnerable groups in urban areas. The book reviews literature and previous findings to develop a conceptual framework. Preliminary investigation is done separately for urban areas and large cities of India and a detailed statistical analysis is done for Mumbai. An overview at urban areas and large cities give general understanding of the issue and is useful to model the relationships during the analysis for Mumbai. The results to considerable extent substantiate the hypothesis. Females and rural and newer migrants are actually among the most vulnerable to urban malnutrition. The findings imply critical role of public intervention to deal with the issue along with of multidimensional research approach.