Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Shifting production/shifting consumption: A political ecology of health

perceptions in Kumaon, India
Carly E. Nichols
School of Geography and Development, University of Arizona, Harvill Building, Room 409, Tucson, AZ 85721, United States

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 12 February 2015
Received in revised form 15 June 2015
Accepted 19 June 2015

Keywords:
Political ecology of health
Subjectivity
Desire
Consumption
Corporeality
Agriculture
Food security

a b s t r a c t
Despite rapid economic growth, India has not seen the improvements in food and nutritional security
that other developing countries have had. This Asian enigma has generated a wealth of economistic
analyses seeking to explain the persistence of poor nutrition, yet few studies have looked at everyday
experiences of changing food systems, and how this impacts nutritional practices as well as the processes
of subject formation. In this paper, I draw on qualitative research conducted in Uttarakhand, North India
and examine how state-led shifts in agricultural production have resulted in changing food consumption
practices and diminished perceptions of health. Villagers link this decreased health to increased chemicals in home-produced food, greater dependence on the market for food purchases, and generational
changes in dietary preferences. Despite villagers cognizance of the negative health effects of these practices, they largely view these byproducts of capitalistic development with an air of inevitability.
Following Mansfield (2011) this paper contributes to the political ecology of health literature by employing the concept of food as a vector of intercorporeality (Stassart and Whatmore, 2003:449) and bringing
this into conversation with a poststructuralist understanding of subjectivity. I argue that within shifting
landscapes of agriculture production and food consumption, notions of diminished health are indicative
of the complex and always incomplete processes of subject formation. I view shifting health perceptions
as intimate bodily resistances to agricultural development, and conclude that within agricultural development programs a focus on bodily health and well-being is a fecund platform for further experimental
research that seeks to imagine development differently.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As I traversed the hills of Kumaon, I often heard the curious declaration that peoples health used to be better. I found this observation peculiar given that we were in Uttarakhand a state that
has been lauded in recent years for its impressive economic growth
(Gusain, 2014; PC-GOI, 2009). Indeed, life in this sub-Himalayan
hill region was starkly different from the recent past, when the
now ubiquitous motorbikes and mobile phones were but a distant
dream. Along with tourism development and migration remittances, horticultural development has been one of the primary
vehicles for this marked growth in income. The hill climate makes
this region an ideal locale for high-value temperate zone fruit and
vegetable crops that are unable to grow in Indias vast IndoGangetic plains region (Mittal et al., 2008). The governmentsubsidized fruit orchards and greenhouses that increasingly dot
the landscape are a testament to this shift in production patterns.
These shifts have led to a situation where increased incomes mean
E-mail address: cnichols@email.arizona.edu
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.06.018
0016-7185/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

households are largely self-sufficient in grain stocks year round,

which is a major goal of national and international food security
policy. However, despite newfound caloric self-sufficiency, I found
that people felt that this new type of food consumption, in and of
itself, was also productive of weaker human bodies, making them
more amenable to fatigue as well as disease.
I find this contradiction especially remarkable given the fact
that rates of malnutrition remain disturbingly high in India
(Fan and Pandya-Lorch, 2012:8, also Menon et al., 2009; IIPS,
2007; Hungama, 2011; von Grebmer et al., 2014), despite state
efforts to combat food insecurity since 1937 (Mooij, 1998).
Prominent programs introduced by the government to combat
food and nutrition insecurity include government grain rationing
through the Public Distribution System, free meals and nutrition
supplementation for mothers and young children through the
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) anganwadi centers,
and free lunches for government school children in first to eighth
grade through the Mid-Day Meal scheme. On the other hand, rural
development initiatives such as the National Horticulture Mission
(NHM) and Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY) attempt to

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

improve smallholder profitability and productivity through providing free or subsidized agricultural inputs (seeds, pesticides, and
fertilizers) and training on technology or livelihood alternatives
(e.g. floriculture). Similarly, non-governmental programs addressing rural food insecurity tend to focus on livelihood diversification,
the introduction of kitchen gardens, and female empowerment
strategies, which are intended to positively impact household
nutrition levels (Klennert, 2005).
Despite this mobilization of targeted resources, malnutrition
and food insecurity remain major problems in India, which is highlighted by the need for the 2013 populist National Food Security
Act that sought to reassert governmental commitment to the cause
(UNICEF, 2014; Save the Children, 2009; von Grebmer et al., 2014).
Furthermore, while the Indian economy has seen tremendous
growth in the last decade, malnutrition indicators have not followed suit at an adequate pace (Fan and Pandya-Lorch, 2012).
Thus, there are lingering questions over just why India has not seen
the reduction in malnutrition figures that other countries experiencing similar growth have seen.
Academic and political commenters have provided many different plausible explanations for this disconnect. Endemic corruption
and bureaucratic inefficiency has long been seen as a major barrier
to program functionality. While recent evidence suggests improvements in certain regions, supply chain leakages and absentee village level workers are still implicated as major drivers behind
persistence of malnutrition (Khera, 2006, 2011). Gender inequality
is also seen as a primary driver of food insecurity, with analysts
arguing that increasing female economic and social status is a crucial component in addressing the roots of persistent malnutrition
(Shah, 2012; Meinzen-Dick et al., 2012; Vollmer et al., 2014;
Quisumbing et al., 1995). Another line of criticism contends that
Indias agricultural policies have been responsible through ignoring the productivity potential of smallholder, rainfed agriculture
and not directing adequate resources toward producers (Sharma,
2011; Rosegrant and Cline, 2003). Lastly, recent research has
pointed to the large sanitation problem in India, with some suggesting that open defecation may in fact be a primary cause for
Indias lingering malnutrition (Spears, 2013; Headey et al., 2014).
Moreover, due to researchers and policymakers increasing
research on micronutrient malnutrition, such as iron-deficient anemia and vitamin-A and iodine deficiencies, the problem is now
viewed as more complex, not as simply an issue of calorie or protein deficiency but one that is much more difficult to track, monitor, and address (Barrett, 2010; Gillespie and Kadiyala, 2012).
While these macro-level analyses have been useful in depicting
the problem using broad strokes, little work has investigated rural
peoples everyday experiences of food and nutrition security in
relation to the myriad food and nutritional security programs
(Kumar, 2012). In this paper I address this lacuna through analyzing how various program and policies, especially those that
promote horticultural development, impact food and nutrition
practices and perceptions among villagers in the rural area of
Kumaon in Uttarakhand, India.
As the definition of food security is broad in scope,1 there is a
vast literature that seeks to analytically parse the concept into
measurable phenomenon and to develop different indicators and
scales with which to complete this task (Barrett, 2010; Coates,
2013; Coates et al., 2006; Jones and Ngure, 2013). Recent advancements in this field have argued for indexes to be based on a suite
of different scales measuring items such as dietary diversity, caloric
intake, safety and cultural acceptability. Notably, it is this latter cat1
The most widely used definition is when all people at all times have physical,
economic, and social access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food that meets peoples
dietary needs as well as their food preferences to maintain a healthy and active life
(FAO, 2001).

183

egory of cultural acceptability where tools for measurement have

yet to be developed (Coates, 2013, 192). Perhaps this is unsurprising
given that theorists have long pointed to the fact that culture itself is
an exceedingly complex concept, more of a process than a thing, and
always seen to be relational, as well as shaped by actors that fall
under its auspices (Williams, 1985). Thus, measuring acceptability
within the ever-shifting cultural milieu, is, in short, a challenge.
This is especially true when food security interventions themselves
may very well be complicit in shifting food cultures and tastes of
people.2 As capturing this dynamic interplay of social, ecologic,
and economic change might elude food security scales, ethnographic
investigations of how shifting food systems affect perceptions of
health are increasingly necessary. Similarly, understanding the shifts
in subjectivities that are part and parcel of food system change
allows for a more nuanced understanding of food and nutrition security outcomes. Thus, the aim of this paper is not to contribute to
these debates, but to appreciate the complexities that food-system
change has on the ways people view their health and wellbeing.
While developing different methodologies with which to
measure food insecurity is critical to advocacy and fundraising
efforts, it is unclear whether these nuanced debates translate into
on-the-ground food security interventions (Noack and Pouw,
2015). That is, when programs are operationalized, they may be
reduced to basic calorie subsidization, rather than meeting the
more lofty goals of providing nutritious food that meets peoples
dietary needs as well as their food preferences to maintain a
healthy and active life (FAO, 2001). I take seriously the importance
of this oft-forgotten clause by understanding the roles of embodied
perceptions and beliefs in relation to a changing food system.
Understanding the perceptions of new consumptive practices is
particularly relevant given the influx of new research from health
psychologists, which confirms that strongly held beliefs about
foods produce biophysical reactions as strong as actual food allergies (Crum et al., 2011; Langer, 2009).
Furthermore, there is currently a policy focus on leveraging
agriculture to approach problems of malnutrition through practices such as crop diversification, biofortification, and the creation
of kitchen gardens (IFPRI, 2011; Hawkes et al., 2012; Kadiyala et al.,
2012; Ruel and Alderman, 2013). This analysis makes an important
contribution to the scant literature on the intersections between
agriculture development and embodied conceptions of food security, health, and wellbeing (Bonnin and Turner, 2012; Finnis,
2007, 2008; Panelli and Tipa, 2009). I situate this analysis within
the nascent political ecology of health (PEH) subfield. While scholars have enthusiastically discussed the analytical rigor of such
approach, the empirical studies using a PEH framework are limited
in number. This article both adds to this literature and extends it
by more deeply engaging with how biosocial health processes
are rich sites of subject formation.
The rest of the article is organized into five sections. First, I
review the literature and outline the theoretical tools that I use
to unpack food security and health perceptions in Kumaon.
Second, I explain my methods and study site, briefly outlining
the political ecology of agricultural development in Nainital. This
is followed by my findings and discussion, which demonstrate
the bodily experiences of changing food systems as well as how
2
This has been argued in the case of the Public Distribution Systems exclusive
allotments of rice and wheat. Whereas many parts of India, including Kumaon,
previously used staple grains such as millets or sorghum, now due to the widespread
availability of highly subsidized rice and wheat through the PDS these nutritionally
superior coarse cereals are no longer seen as palatable or desirable in comparison to
their fine-grain counterparts. Thus, a certain definitional tautology arises when food
security interventions shift the very food cultures that they are then measured
against. Moreover, it becomes possible that food security interventions play a role in
shifting food systems and cultures toward a desire for foods that may not necessarily
lead to improvements in the ability to lead healthy and active lives.

184

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

these new perceptions of health and well-being are indicative of

subjects-in-perplexity, who are simultaneously desirous of, and
resistant to, new forms of global development (Ramamurthy,
2003). In my final section, I conclude that these perceptions might
be a promising platform with which to begin to imagine development differently.

2. Literature review and theory

Recently there has been an influx of calls for a new political
ecology of health (Jackson and Neely, 2014; Guthman and
Mansfield, 2012). Building off earlier interventions (King, 2010;
Mayer, 1996, 2000), this new wave of naturesociety scholars
argue that traditional political ecology has been too concerned
with the ecology out there and not enough focus has been placed
on the ecology of bodies (Finnis, 2007; Guthman, 2012; HayesConroy and Hayes-Conroy, 2012; Mansfield, 2008, 2011; Sultana,
2008, 2009, 2012). As political ecologists have long operated under
the pretense that nature is constituted by social processes, this
work extends the social constructivist approach to the biomedical
readings of health. Moreover, it was argued that human health
both shapes as well as is shaped by naturesociety relations.
Richmond et al. (2005) make an important, early contribution in
pointing to the ways that control over environmental resources
have profound effects on the ways that Namgis First Nation populations in Canada understand their health. Specifically, he examines how aquaculture development was cited by research
participants as a central reason why their community suffered
from generally poor health. He proposes a structural approach to
understand the iterative relationship among political autonomy,
natural resource use and enjoyment, economic opportunities, and
health and well-being, where when control over the first three factors is reduced then feelings of health and well-being also falter.
While this is a useful schema for understanding the ways that
economy, politics, and environment all intermingle to affect health
perceptions, he fails to account for how the changes in production
of fishes altered their very materiality and became embodied as
altered health perceptions.
Yet agro-food scholars had done this theoretical work, arguing
that the social and natural world were mutually constitutive of
one another through their always in flux relations. Thus by
Goodmans (1999:17) formulation, agro-food systems came to be
seen as dynamic entities, characterized by a two-step process:
on the land, where agricultural nature and its harvest are coproduced and co-evolve with social labor, and at the table, where
these co-productions are metabolized corporeally and symbolically
as food. Within this turn it became useful to see that food is at
once a life-sustaining material object deeply implicated in capitalist production systems and also a symbol of intimately corporeal
cultural practice. Building on this theoretical frame, scholars
started to forefront the materiality of food and the fact that it is
imbued with the ability to create effects, namely provoking visceral, affective responses related to sensory experience and cultural memory (Bennett, 2010; Hayes-Conroy and Hayes-Conroy,
2008; Longhurst et al., 2008, 2009; Panelli and Tipa, 2009;
Probyn, 2000; Whatmore, 2002). In one formulation, Stassert and
Whatmore theorize food as a vector of intercorporeality, which
means that food is a multifaceted object that links not just economic production and cultural and social consumption but also
biophysical environments to human bodies. That is, food is unique
in that it lies in the nexus of being an important economic good to
be produced, an object of cultural and social significance to be consumed, a central component of the environment, as well as an
influencer of human health.

Particularly instructive here is Mansfield (2011) who picks up

on this ever more nuanced understanding of food and uses it to
trace out a more materialist political ecology of health within her
research on fisheries. Mansfield (2011:416) writes,
Particular practices of production and consumption create new
relationships between the food, human health and the natural
environment. Food is a vector of intercorporeality, which means
that food not only is both cultural and economic, but also connects people and the natural environment in very material, bodily ways (Stassart and Whatmore, 2003:449). . .Dilemmas. . .
come from the ways that we are producing multiple new natures
(bodily and environmental) that also participate in producing
each other.
Mansfield is significant in extending the food-human relationship to questions of health. While Mansfield makes space for
new theorizations in this direction, she herself is less interested
in the nuanced ways that human health is experienced as a result
of fish consumption. Instead she is largely focused on political
economy of fish production, directing her attention to larger scales
of analysis.
In this respect, Sultana has charted ahead (2006, 2011, 2012)
through bringing feminist insights on the differentially embodied
experiences of health and wellbeing (Del Casino, 2010; Parr,
2002) to bear on political ecology of health. Sultana examines
how the political economy of arsenic groundwater poisoning in
Bangladesh, has implication for subjectivity formation. She
engages a poststructural understanding of subjectivity as unfixed
and emergent, where people can inhabit many different subject
positions, or identities, depending on the social relations as well
as the material practices (such as types of labor, consumption,
and leisure) in which they are engaged. Despite differing in their
analytical focal points, Mansfield, Sultana, and Richmond all ask
important questions about how the environment-development
contradictions investigated by political ecologists often also propel
public health debates.
Situating myself between what these scholars have accomplished, in this paper, I link the idea of food as a vector of intercorporeality to the concept of subjects-in-perplexity (Ramamurthy,
2003, 2011) to investigate how shifting modes of production and
consumption are productive of subjects that are simultaneously
desirous and resistant to capitalist development. Ramamurthy is
instructive in theorizing perplexity to explore the way that development acts as series of processes that often overwhelm subjects
[provoking] feelings of confusion, of loss, and of desire [that] are
not separate from processes of capital accumulation
(Ramamurthy, 2003:525). Forging the concept out of a feminist
epistemology, she argues that at the site of consumption, subject
formation becomes contradictory, and conflicting ideologies abut
one another, revealing the excess of subjectshow they are more
than just their bodies, how they are not simply resistant subjects
nor sources of alternative. . .knowledges and practices
(Ramamurthy, 2003:543). Crucially, perplexity offers not only a
feminist critique of essentialist ideas of the singular subject (e.g.
the villager), but it offers an experiential basis from which a type
of transnational solidarity might emerge that transcends
northsouth and ruralurban binaries to contest the ill-effects of
capitalist systems of production (Ramamurthy, 2003:534).
This concept has deep resonance with Kumaon, which is a mix
of subsistence and capitalistic agriculture practices where subjectivities are captivated by new desires and ideas, which are reified
through various practicesproducing feelings of perplexity. In
other words, new desires to participate in the spoils of cash economies have led people to pursue economic development activities
that are also complicit in creating perceptions of decreased health

185

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

and well-being. These manifestations of new consumption practices complicate simple readings of food security, because
increased access to food does not necessarily translate into
improved levels of wellbeing. I find the progressive politics that
might emerge from such theorizations of the excess of subjects
during processes of consumption to be a productive path ahead
for future research.
In this paper I seek to situate my contribution between these
scholars in using food as a vector of intercorporeality to understand how shifting production and consumption practices both
shape and are shaped by new subjectivities in the Kumaon hills.
Contextualizing agricultural development using political ecology
is critical to better understanding the ways in which political
economy and environment are intimately intertwined in the health
perceptions of villagers in India. In this next section, I will outline
my methods and then introduce the study site and trace the
agricultural development that has marked the region. Following
this, I will present my results, where I argue that while these processes have a very material and bodily reality to them, they are also
implicated in the always messy and complex projects of subject
formation.

Table 1
Malnutrition in Uttarakhand.

%
%
%
%

Below normal body-mass index (BMI)

Stunted (too short for age)
Undernourished (too thin for age): 38
Anemic

I have used pseudonyms for NGOs and village names throughout this essay.
While I asked people about the National Food Security Act, everyoneeven Public
Distribution Shop ownershad little knowledge about this recently passed legislation
and many people had no awareness about it.
4

Women

Children
(659 mo.)

28

55

30

29

44
38
61

Data from National Family and Health Survey-3, 20062007 (IIPS, 2007).

Table 2
Interviews conducted in Uttarakhand (n = 81).
Sector

Title

Government employees
(n = 20)

Anganwadi center employees

Accredited Social Health Activist
(ASHA)
Bhojan mata
Auxiliary Nurse and Midwife (ANM)
Horticultural/agricultural officers
Public Distribution System (PDS) shop
owner

5
5

NGO workers (n = 15)

Fieldworkers
Women
Men
Managerial level

7
2

Community members
(n = 44)

Women
Men
Husband/wife couples

3. Methodology
In summer 2013 I conducted research in Nainital District,
Uttarakhand. Nainital is comprised of a northern hills region and
a plains area known as the Bhabar, which includes the economic
and railway town of Haldwani. The Bhabar is substantially more
economically developed than the hill region, which is dominated
by smallholder farming communities (Mittal et al., 2008). In this
project, I worked entirely within the hills region of the district.
The most recent government statistics suggest that malnutrition
is a problem in Uttarakhand as a whole, although these data are
nearly 12 years old and must be read with caution (see Table 1).
The NGO, Green People, assisted me to identify 4 villages2
with active NGO programs (Madali and Garanpur) and 2 without
(Kacchiyola and Bhabu3). These specific villages were selected due
to their relative proximity to the NGO office, and because they were
diverse from one another in terms of households with varying
income levels and access to government and NGO services. This
allowed for my interviews and data to capture a broader picture of
food security across different castes and classes. In the three villages
of Madali, Garanpur, and Kacchiyola, I lived among three different
farming families, and had the opportunity to engage in participant
observation of farming practices along with food preparation and
consumption. However, my main source of data was from semistructured interviews (n = 81) (see Table 2). I have intermediate
Hindi, so I employed two different field assistants, Deepak and
Sanvi, and audio-recorded all interviews so we could review them
for translation accuracy.
The interviews were structured around agricultural production,
food consumption, health perceptions and beliefs, as well as government and NGO services with which people engaged.4 I used
the Hindi word kamjor (which can be roughly translated as weakness
and was frequently used by villagers in this area to describe someone who is malnourished) as a starting point to delve into peoples
various conceptions of health and its various causal factors. I found
that throughout the interviews, villagers often struggled to answer
the questions about everyday food practices and understandings of
health. The everyday, quotidian quality of these activities made
them seem, too many, quite unremarkable. It was here that informal

Men

Total

1
3
4
2

6
29
8
9

conversations and participant observation proved indispensable in

understanding the significance of the everyday to the ways in which
food and nutrition practices are viewed.
There were many common experiences to food, nutrition and
agriculture shared among research participants, who, according
to government statistics, suffer from poor nutritional outcomes.
All respondents were smallholder farmers with limited access to
irrigation infrastructure. The principal cash crops grown were
potato, cabbage, beans, peas, and cauliflower along with fruit trees
such as peach, apple, pear, and apricot. These crops competed with
land for the staples of the region, which included legumes such as
soybean and kidney bean along with cereals such as millets, maize,
and more recently wheat. Those with government-subsidized
polyhouses often cultivated high-value crops such as broccoli,
tomato, or Chinese cabbage. All households also produced a small
plot of food for home consumption that included a wide range of
vegetable crops (eggplant, tomato, coriander, chili, cucumber,
radish, among others). These were cultivated on a very limited
scale. Moreover food consumption followed similar patterns across
all householdsbreakfast consisted of roti (staple wheat flatbread)
and some accompaniment such as subzi (cooked vegetable) or dahi
(yogurt). Lunch was typically rice (chawal) and legumes (daal) and
dinner consisted of subzi, roti, dahi again. Drinking tea with milk
(the ubiquitous chai) was highly prevalent. The consumption of
dahi was more mixed and dependent on whether the family had
healthy livestock in their homestead, which was also an indicator
of wealth. Moreover, market convenience foods such as biscuits,
toffees, chips, and instant noodles are increasingly commonplace.
While these general commonalities emerged, there were innumerable nuanced differences in all of these practices, which are
increasingly subject to changing conditions, and it is here where
I focused my analytical attention.
In my data analysis, I read through the detailed interview notes
along with participant observation field notes and noted themes
that consistently emerged. After identifying broad trends, I reread
the data line-by-line, coding segments of text based on these most

186

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

prominent themes. Since my interview data centered on the three

disparate but interrelated areas of agricultural labor, food consumption, and health perceptions, I highlighted themes within
each realm, and paid close attention to the ways in which they
intersected.
In doing so, some peculiar paradoxes began to emerge in the
ways that government and non-government development programs affected peoples perceptions of food and nutrition security
and health. In particular, it seemed that while increased cash cropping and rising incomes had generated greater access to yearround food, that people oftentimes felt this food was contaminated
and adversely impacting community health. In the next section I
will provide a brief history of agricultural development, focusing
on the political ecological processes that have shaped and been
shaped by the hills of Kumaon.
4. Kumaon and the political ecology of agro-ecological change
Although horticultural development has occurred with renewed
intensity in the last 15 years in Kumaon, it in fact dates back to the
time of colonialists. In an attempt to make the hill region a profitable enterprise, British administrators introduced the potato in
1843a crop that remains both economically and nutritionally
important today. Published in a 1904, colonial Gazetteer administrator H.R. Nevill notes,
. . .the products of English vegetable gardens grow readily in the
hills. Their cultivation has been largely taken up by the hill people, especially in the vicinity of Naini Tal, where market gardening is a business that yearly increases in importance. . .the most
important and by far the most widely cultivated is the potato. . .
[which] is one of the most important features in the recent economic history of the district and has had a marked effect on the
prosperity of the tract.
[Nevill, 1904:6365]
However, introducing this type of export cultivation was not an
easy task, as the hill populations were historically transient, with
whole families migrating to cultivate tracts of the lowlands during the winter months (Nevill, 1904:9798). Indeed, at its peak,
nearly 30,000 peasants participated in seasonal migration (Pande,
1999:78). Colonialists were keen to permanently settle the population so they could assess and tax cultivated lands, generating revenue for administration, and ultimately imperial profit. After a
failed attempt at introducing tea plantations, the British brought
potato, which was readily accepted by the Kumaonis as it thrived
on their hillsides, serving as both sustenance and a source of
income. Cultivation quickly exploded in correlation to the rapid
development of nearby Nainital as a popular summer town with
the British.
As populations settled, colonial administrators sought to identify hissedars (proprietary cultivators) and record them as
landowners, holding them responsible for tax payment. This
undermined the current village structure that was typically dominated by one single extended family, where decisions about agricultural production were communal (Pande, 1999:73). Almost
immediately, this practice influenced the social relations of the village, transforming a relatively homogenous group into a hierarchical one. Whereas land once was divided through a cooperative,
communal model, today it is the source of competition, fraternal
conflict, and frequent familial litigation over land rights. This
parceling of land between sons now manifests itself in a phenomenon of land miniaturization, a problem plaguing South
Asian agricultural viability more broadly (Harriss-White, 2008;
Rao, 2008).
Through introducing potato as the regions first major cash crop,
along with radically altering the system of land tenure ship, these

historical policies have made a lasting impact on both the regions

landscape and its social relations. What is crucial is that while the
colonial legacy continues to impact virtually every facet of peoples
lives, it has largely been normalized and is seen as a teleological
and natural evolution of the region.
In contrast, the developments that occurred in the post-colonial
period have a stinging presence on the memories of many farmers.
Post-independence, in 1954 an Indo-American team recommended
constructing a rural university following the land-grant pattern of
the US. Thus Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture &
Technology, the first agricultural university in the country, was
born not more than 60 km from this hill area. The influence of this
university, which was staffed by agricultural scientists from the
University of Illinois, is neatly illustrated in the fact that Norman
Bourlaug himself remarked that Pantnagar was the harbinger of
Green Revolution of India (Pawar, 2008:1). Thus Pantnagar began
to serve as a conduit for the agricultural technologies of Green
Revolution notoriety, namely, improved seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. This process was dominated by the introduction of fruit
trees and temperate-climate vegetable crops that grow poorly in
the heat of Indias plains states.
Currently, within my study area, the cultivation of horticultural
crops (such as cauliflower, cabbage, French beans, potato, and fruit
trees) has encroached upon the land previously reserved for
growing staple grain and legumes. Cultivation of these grains
was important not only for food but as a source of animal fodder
in a region that is historically fodder scarce. Indeed, fodder scarcity
was the one of the primary reasons that hill people made their
annual migration with cattle in tow (Pande, 1999). Yet, postharvest, horticultural crops leave no bio-organic waste, leading to
fodder scarcity that disrupts the traditional integrated livestock
agricultural system practiced in the hills and brings manifold problems. For one, fodder collection has led to deforestation, leading to
soil erosion and unprecedented hydrological shifts. Second, due to
scarcity of fodder, people now have the tendency to keep fewer
animals, causing a decrease in animal manure to be used as organic
fertilizer (Tiwari, 2008; Tiwari and Joshi, 2005; Tulachan and
Neupane, 1999). This scarcity of animal manure meant that farmers have little choice but to buy nitrogenpotassiumphosphorous
(NPK) or di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) fertilizers from the market. Farmers who insist on keeping their animals despite lack of
fodder are now reliant on purchasing the bio-matter left over from
the plains, increasing their already high input costs.
While the ecological ramifications of horticultural development
and other land use changes have been well documented, I argue
this is not the only impact these new production practices have left
on the people of the region. That is, paralleling these shifts in
production have been implicit shifts in consumption, as villagers
are compelled to eat more food from the market and the
government-subsidized Public Distribution System (PDS), as
opposed to home production. Families with young children and
school-age children in government schools are also now consuming prepared foods through the Integrated Child Development service (ICDS) anganwadi centers as well as through the government
schools mid-day meal program.

5. Shifting consumption/shifting subjectivities: new desires and

perceptions of health in Kumaon
In this section, I examine how these new forms of production
and consumption have had complex interactions for food security
in the region. In particular, while there may be increased food
consumption, the novel types of food consumed often led to newly
articulated negative perceptions of health. This is evidenced in
villager narratives that discuss the use of chemicals, the increasing

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

reliance on outside food, and the change in dietary habits as possible reasons for poorer health in the present day. This change has
led to increased reliance on outside sources of health care, which
compounds villager anxiety surrounding health. Thus, I find it
useful to analyze the horticultural development that has overtaken
the area using the concept of food as a vector of intercorporeality.
While these diminished perceptions of health have an intimately
embodied reality to them, I argue they are also reflective of the
incomplete and messy project of subject formation that are always
tightly imbricated within development processes.

and sprays and so many chemicals whereas my mother-in-law

never did (7/5/2013). When I asked her why she thought this
was the case Asmiti laughed and said I did not think of this on
my own but I heard it at a health training and among other people
in the village (7/5/2013).
One horticultural officer named Alok was similarly dismayed by
the increase in health problems. My field assistant Deepak and I
ask him, since people began to use more fertilizers and more pesticides, do you think that there health has changed? Alok replies:
Very much! Before [Nainital] was not so developed, and today it
is developed and we find out about so many diseases. Before we
never heard about the patri (kidney stone) but now 6070%
suffer from patri. And after that there is diabetes, 2025 years
ago nobody knew about the patri and other common disease
like blood pressure, heart problem. . .and that is all [chemicals]
effect. Before 2025 years nobody knows about [diabetes]. This
is all because of the khanpan (food) people are eating (7/9/
2013).

5.1. New landscapes of chemical consumption

Throughout my fieldwork the notion that the new chemicals
introduced with horticultural crops have degraded food quality
was widespread among villagers. Priyanka, a village health worker
commented,
When the women come to us we make them understand that
the earlier time is different and todays time is different. We
are saying do not do the things people did before because at
that time people are not using the divya (chemicals) and khad
(fertilizers) in their crops. In old times5 the kamjori (weakness)
was much less. In the old times, there was less disease and
peoples health was good, so that is why it was not necessary
[to take different medicines and iron tablets during pregnancy]
(6/22/2013).
Priyanka goes on to describe a quite unique chronological
narrative of how health care has transformed in conjunction with
food and agriculture practices.
Priyanka: In the old time people used jaboo [herbs/
traditional medicine] because there was very less illness.
Deepak: So before people used Jaboo as medicine?
P: Yes, but in the past. . .people were not getting disease and if
they did they used jaboo. But nowadays, there is more
disease and more health problem.
D: So now is jaboo effective?
P: Nobody is using the Jaboo and if someone is using it then it
is not working.
D: So what will work?
P: [loudly exclaims] allopathic medicine and the hospital. There
is the homeopathic [more traditional] treatment available in
the hospital but people are not going for this, they are going
for the allopathic treatment because that is what is effective
(6/22/2013).
On her account, she sees the emergence of allopathic medicine
(biomedicine) not as a sign of progress and development, but
rather as a direct response to the problems engendered by pesticide and fertilizer use. Priyankas narrative illustrates that certain
knowledge realms such as technical fields and science-based biomedicine are legitimated as the only available option for todays
much different health quandaries.
This notion was widespread and was oftentimes felt most
acutely in combined households where several generations worked
side by side. Asmiti, another health-worker spoke about how she
gets extremely tired during agricultural field work, as compared
to her mother-in-law or grandmother-in-law. While Asmitis
reverence to her elders is not atypical, what is interesting is that
she quickly says, it is like this because the food we are eating
now is different because people use khad (chemical fertilizer)
5
Old times was frequently discussed to discuss 23 generations prior. People
discussed when their parents or grandparents were children and adolescents.

187

By viewing food as a vector of intercorporeality, then, one can

see how land and ecological degradation become an embodied
phenomenon through food consumption. In other words, changing
production practices are reflected in the materiality of the crops,
and when they are consumed people believe it adversely impacts
their health. While chemical pesticides have been identified as an
occupational hazard of farming in India (Aktar et al., 2009), the
way khad and divya were discussed by these respondents focused
on an idea of consumption rather than exposure.
Moreover, just as new types of agriculture and horticulture
development have produced new sets of problems (pest outbreaks,
soil infertility) that are seen as only remedied through new technical solutions, the same discourse applies for health. Here again, the
influx of outside knowledges about scientific agriculture is consumed and embodied and manifests in the new health concerns
that require further outside interventionthis time in the form of
biomedical intervention.
Consequently, in recent years there has been a concerted effort
by the government and NGOs to promote organic methods of
agriculture. One farmer, Sanjit, told me that he is very interested
in organic production and learned about it from a local NGO training by Green People. He explains what draws him to this idea,
It is because of health reasons: fertilizers cause cancer and other
disease and that it is not good for the pregnant lady or the baby
inside [the in utero infant]. . .[so] I only use small amounts of
fertilizer on aloo (potato) and matar (pea), but all items for
home consumption are organic. But slowly I am switching aloo
to organic because before I used 4 cutta6 [of chemical fertilizer]
and now I use one cutta (6/24/2013).
Currently there are no marketing outlets for organic produce,
and thus no price premium for this type of production.
Household organic production is almost entirely driven by the
desire to not degrade land as well as a fundamental distrust (and
dislike) of foods that are bought from the market in Haldwani.
Sanjit continues:
The vegetables in the market come from the plains where they
are using much more pesticides and I do not want to grow this
way. The gehun (wheat) I grow is tastier than the market gehun
and the taste is because there is no fertilizer. Because we are
eating the foods from the market with pesticides my wife is
looking weak, my children are looking weak, even my health
is not so good (6/24/2013).

1 cutta = 50 kilograms.

188

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

5.2. Greater dependence on the market and government for food

purchases
While new modes of production have engendered concern
among farmers for the health of their land as well as their families,
there is also a discourse that circulates around food obtained from
the market. Many people routinely expressed that food that came
from the plains was inferior and grown using more chemicals than
in the hills. In almost all instances, farmers greatly preferred their
home food to that from the market, and most certainly from the
government run ration shops. As one man named Pawan so succinctly puts it, our pahar (hill) food is clean food and healthy
because we clean it ourselves (6/22/2013).
This sentiment of uncertainty and skepticism toward outside
foods was frequently espoused, as in the case with Deepti, who
comments
The things from market are not pure and there is divya (chemicals). The things from the market are grown from land with lots
of chemicals and then they [the hill people] are getting these
vegetables and it is not pure and you know they are getting sick
then they are wasting more money on treatment (7/12/2013).
Implicit within this notion is a deep suspicion of the ethics of
the market. While people frequently discussed the amount of
chemicals used in production to be higher, they were also displeased with market foods as they thought them to be adulterated,
an idea consonant with other ethnographic work in South Asia
(Nichter, 2002). This adulteration was widely referred to using
the Hindi word milawat which might be translated as mix-up.
As Pooja, a nurse and midwife suggested, food security means:
Using hari subzi (leafy greens) and using the home grains and
boiled water (6/22/2013). We asked her why she said home
grains and not market or PDS and she forcefully replied: because
market food is milawat so we [the health workers] are saying:
avoid market things, especially grinded foods [such as grains,
legumes, spices] (6/22/2013). I ask her if she can elaborate on
what she means by milawat and Pooja says:
There is color mix-up where suppose in red chili they are mixing the red color and not the chili. In pulses there is different
milawat and in these they are putting divya to protect pulses
and grains for long time from bugs and disease, but divya is
not good for peoples health (6/22/2013).
This suspicion was apparent in another household where we
spoke with a grandmother named Purnima who was sitting next
to her young grandson. Purnima explain: packaged biscuits from
the market are not good for health [because]. . ..when there is packaging there is no surety about when they were made and what
types of materials they are really using (6/29/2013).
In the hills, transactions have largely been based on trust
developed over a long period. Therefore, the increasingly depersonalized forms of commerce engendered by development made
many interviewees wary, and perhaps lead to changing perceptions of bodies and health. This is largely a rapid extension of
socio-spatial flows of information that have been facilitated by
the development in the region. Whereas village life is undergirded by a dense web of social relations and knowledge flows
that are historically rooted, people increasingly have to deal with
outsiders and people with which they know little about. While
peoples perceptions about these new types of food may influence the ways in which they choose to produce and consume
this food, research over the last decade has shown that these
beliefs and mindsets surrounding food likely also impact the
very biophysicality of the way the food is metabolized (Crum
et al., 2011; Langer, 2009). However, this market distrust and

the negative articulations of health it engenders are not evenly

shared across the hills, being crosscut by factors of difference
such as age, gender, class, and caste. For example, women, the
elderly, poorer people, and lower-caste people frequently have
little first-hand experience with the market from where foods
are procured. This lack of information seems to invoke a greater
sense of distrust toward these foodstuffs, especially in comparison to their wealthier male counterparts who seemed to enjoy
traveling to the market, and discussed it with enthusiasm.
5.3. Generational changes in dietary preferences
While people expressed unease with the changes in foods, there
was a chorus of people who similarly discussed changes in consumption and changing tastes in Kumaon as a fraught but inevitable outcome of development. This is a process that is intimately
bound up in the production of new subjects centered on new forms
of consumption. Holding a group interview at a vaccination camp
in an anganwadi center, we sat and talked with two older midwives
(Paraswati and Geeta), a primary school teacher (Kamla), and several center helpers. As the conversation evolved the women proceeded to heatedly analyze and debate what the causes were
behind increases in health problems and decreases in labor
capacity:
Paraswati: Twenty-six years ago women always ate food last
and if there was not enough there was not enough. But that this
food was paushtik (nutritious) because they were eating madua
ki roti (millet flatbread) and makka ki roti (corn flatbread).
Geeta: In the past life people eat madua [finger millet] and
makka [corn] because they do not have enough money to
buy gehun (wheat) and things from the market, so they were
healthy and strong. [Geeta is impassioned and raising her
voice] now people are getting everything from the market
which is why they are sick and they are having so many
health problems.
Kamla: (much younger primary school teacher): people used to
have pure foods like pure milk but now they are eating unpure
things from the market and that is why people are facing so
many health problems (7/6/2013).
There was a sentiment that the youth are not habituated to
these older, healthier ways of living that used to dominate. This
generational divide was most evident surrounding the crop, madua, or finger millet, which is viewed as an inferior grain for the poor
person, despite being nutritionally superior in micronutrient content (such as calcium and iron) to both wheat and rice (Gopalan
et al., 1971; Singh and Raghuvanshi, 2012).
I ask Paraswati if she ever advises people to eat madua and makka
and she says, yes but people do not like to eat it. . ..nowadays people
do not eat madua they just feed their animals and sell it. Geeta
quickly adds, nowadays people are very modern and are embarrassed to eat madua because it is a cheap food. . .everyone wants
Maggi and chow mein [popular snack foods bought in markets].
The shift away from consuming the nutritious foods grown at home
is largely seen to be as a result of the development of the region.
Deepti observes
The old generation used to eat more home foods like madua,
makka, and gehun ki roti (wheat flatbread) and they havent
ate any market food. They take everything from home. But this
generation takes most of the food from the market and the old
generation used to drink lots of milk and now people are keen
to make money so they get new species of cow and sell milk
and keep less milk at home which they use only for chai or kids
(7/10/2013).

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

Thus state-led shifts in production have engendered a complex

web of effects in the Nainital hills. While the ecological damage of
chemical intensive agriculture is well documented, I have argued
that, equally troublesome, is the change in consumption practices
that renders villagers less able to access the foods they see as nutritious. Yet if the enormous popularity of the instant noodle packets
of Maggi is any indication, demands for these new market foods
especially, though not exclusively, from the younger generation
are now common place.7 At the heart of degraded agro-ecology
and the diminished perceptions of health is the fomenting of new
desires, aspirations and tastes of Kumaon villagers that has been
engendered by the increased mobility of youth as well as the vertical
integration with markets and government agencies that has happened with increasing rapidity over the last two decades. It is encapsulated by the figure of paisiwali soch or the money minded
individual. From the NGO fieldworker Reetika:
Todays people are money minded people (paisewali soch), people want less work and more money. . .in my opinion, things
from before8 like madua (millets), daal (legumes), the home
foodsthey should be in present time now too because they need
less hard work, and it is home grown food, and it is healthy, there
is no use of chemical. But the present thinking has been changed
(6/22/2013).
Increases in incomes have meant increases in youth mobility.
This has brought tall tales and second hand accounts of urban consumptive practices to Kumaon, which challenge the way hill people see themselves in relation to outsiders and even one another.
It seemed to stoke a desire and strive to participate in this national
transformation that is happening with such rapidity in the urban.
In interviewing one man at the horticulture office I ask him how
the shift from agriculture to horticulture might have affected food
security
Now people are eating like they do in Delhi. They are eating
good foods and wearing good clothes, this kind of lifestyle
now come to the village. Before people are eating only homemade things but now people are eating chow mein, momo,
maggi, samosa [Indian street foods] in the village, but before
who knows about that. Because now people have money they
are getting these facilities at home. If they didnt have money
then how will they be able to do this?
There is a deeper feeling that a new type of ethics has
descended upon the hills that is based on principles of capitalism.
This largely revolved around shifts from a gift to money system of
exchange. The notion that now people are different and that their
thinking has changed permeates the hills. One very young NGO
employee comments
For as long as I remember people want money, because now
everything is very expensive and you have to buy everything
from the market. Before people are growing enough dhania
(coriander) at home and if the neighbor is asking for dhania then
people are definitely giving but now people have less dhania
and if someone asks you for dhania nobody is going to give
and if someone has extra dhania they will sell it in the market
and then they will get sugar or sugar candy.
When we ask what she thinks about this development she
begins laughing and says,
The main thing is that everything is now expensive. . .and before
people were illiterate and people did not know things about

7
Nearly every household interviewed reported consuming Maggi in varying
frequencies from once or twice a month to several times per week.
8
Reetika is referring to the time of her parents or grandparents.

189

education and job and career and they were very involved with
agriculture and you know they got everything from home and
now people are educated and they want their sons to become
doctors or lawyers and this is why everything is expensive
because they want to give good education to the kids
(Interview notes, Kriti, 7/27/2013).
The dream of being a doctor, engineer, or lawyer is a further
part of the imaginary in aspirations to be the ideal Indian. The
thought of continuing on in the field of horticulture is seen to be
something of a last resort. Indeed, education was the main expense
that people cited when discussing the expenses of modern living.
A second older woman named Geeta has been a major actor in
the development of dairy cooperatives in the area, which starting
from 1992 have engendered complex effects on FNS. She smiles
fondly and excitedly relates that before the emergence of the dairy:
Everyone used [milk] at home and there was plenty of milk. A
family might have one cow and one buffalo and they made dahi
(curd), and ghee (clarified butter). They consume as much dairy
as they please. Also, because everyone has plenty of milk and
there was no dairy [at which to sell the milk], then if some
households did not have milk because they did not have animals or their animals were pregnant then people would
ALWAY give them milk like a full bucket of milk, maybe 3
whole liters of milk. Also sometimes they would give dahi.
[She is talking excitedly and grinning widely] (7/8/2013).
I ask her whether after the dairy opened the amount of milk
that people consumed in the village began to decrease. She says
that it decreased by maybe half and begins to laugh as she
recounts,
At that time people were trying to drink much less milk then
and people are saying only take a little. She says noonan, noonan
(a Kumaoni word meaning a tiny bit) was what everyone said
after the dairy began, but before the attitude was drink as much
as you can (7/8/2013).
As a leading figure in creating the dairy cooperative, Geeta has
been complicit in and even encouraging of the project of development, yet thrusts of resistance remain in her, which are expressed
as she speaks of the past. The tensions that are manifested by participating in a project that produces contradictions, is usefully seen
as a perplexed subject. This exposes itself when Geeta maintains
that the dairy is a positive development for the village, saying,
It is beneficial because [villagers] get one new source of income
and that now, because of the climate, people are not getting
good rates for their crops. But because there is a dairy then people can sell the milk and they are buying new species of cow
and buffalo which are giving more milk. . ..now when someone
sells milk they will think: at the end of the month I will have
this amount of money from selling milk and they will make
plans for how they will spend this money (7/8/2013).
This last point alludes to the fact that the aspirations and
consumptive desires of hill people have radically changed over
the past twenty years. Ramamurthy calls the emergence of a simultaneous yearning for the past coupled with aspirational desires for
modernity as perplexity, which can be used to unravel the way
new subjectivities intermingle with one another at the site of consumption. Foucault (1978:96) writes that within the dense webs of
power relations, resistances are often mobile and transitory furrowing across individuals themselves, cutting them up and
remolding them, marking off irreducible regions in them, in their
bodies and minds. Thus, while state-led shifts in production and
consumption are trumpeted as signs of progress, the preponderance of health complaints can be seen as an intimate and embodied

190

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

critique of development policy. The interconnected ways that

development has affected the regionits ecology and peopleis
multifaceted and complex, where resistances seep up and bubble
to the surface, even in the most unlikely suspects. This is evidenced
by the many conversation I had with vocal advocates for capitalist
development, who, at the same time decried the effects that this
very development had on their bodily wellbeing.
In one particular instance, I had a lively discussion with a longtime governmental agricultural officer in the area. We were discussing the impacts that chemical fertilizer has had on the region.
As a proponent of state-led horticultural development he starts out
by singing the praises of chemical fertilizers and the progress they
had brought to the region, particularly through improved yields of
potato, an important cash crop. Yet, at the same time he gives an
unsolicited and animated diagnosis of how these practices have
impacted the health of the area.
Alok: When people do not use fertilizer they also get production [of potatoes], but after they start fertilizers then they get
more production [potatoes]. Say, if they gotten ten [cutta]
before, now they get twenty. But change has come into taste. . ..
before taste and quality was very good but production was
less. . ..when I was a child many days we are eating only aloo
(potato), morning aloo, daytime aloo, evening aloo, and everything was ok. But now if we eat aloo 23 times then loose
motions, and dysentery
Deepak: because of divya (agricultural chemicals)?
A: certainly (7/9/2013).
Thus while the yields of aloo have seen a substantial increase
due to changing production technologies, villagers such as Alok
now report that the quality has diminished, leading them to be less
nourishing and even contributing to digestive health problems.
Using a concept of perplexity, I understand Alok and others tendency to at once laud, and yet also condemn, horticulture and
development as illustrative of the complicated and always partial
project of subjectivity formation in making modern consumptive
subjects. While intellectually, they desire new types of consumption, they at the same time have a visceral bodily aversion. I argue
that it is within these interstices that there lays a fecund territory
for participatory research that seeks to imagine development
differently.

6. Conclusion
In this paper, my aim has been to complicate the concept of
food and nutrition security through analyzing the ways that
state-led food system change has complex manifestations in terms
of villagers food consumption practices and their perceptions of
health. In undertaking this task, I have employed qualitative and
ethnographic research to better understand everyday, quotidian
interactions with food and how these intersect with health perceptions. Situating my argument within a political ecology of health
framework, I argued that while villagers have increased access to
total calories, the type of food they are now eating engenders a
diminished sense of wellbeing and health. These new modes of
food consumption largely stem from state and non-state development programs and policy that incentivized farmers to shift from
subsistence to market-based agricultural production. This, in turn,
compelled villagers to procure more food from the market in
Haldwani or from government-run ration shops. However, farmers
and health workers frequently argued that this new type of food
was adulterated with chemicals and lesser-quality ingredients,
thus leading to an overall decline in peoples health and wellbeing.
While economic development, writ large, essentially propelled

such negative perceptions of health and wellbeing, many villagers

remained desirous for yet more development. Thus, while
Richmonds iterative schema linking the realms of economic
opportunity, resource use, autonomy, and health perceptions provides some explanatory power, I find that, rather than neatly building on one another, these processes have more complex
manifestations, which present themselves in a perplexed subject.
Through viewing food as a vector of intercorporeality transmitting degraded ecologies along with stoking new desires one
can begin to more fully appreciate the myriad transitions and contradictions happening within Kumaoni people and their food
system.
Continuing to use food as a heuristic device will be a fruitful
avenue forward in interrogating how political ecologic change
manifests itself through deteriorated health perceptions. More
research needs to be conducted on how changing food production
and consumption affects peoples bodily and mental wellbeing, and
at the same time unleashes a desire for continued expansions of
consumption choices. In the future, important questions might
be asked around what diminishing health perceptions mean for
the trajectory of development in the region, and how social science
researchers can work with community members to explore alternative paths ahead.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers, my advisor Vincent
Del Casino, and my colleague Emma Lawlor for their helpful comments on this manuscript. I am also indebted to my two field assistants Deepak and Sanvi, as well as all of the research participants in
Kumaon for so graciously sharing their stories with me. Lastly, I
acknowledge the University of Arizona Social and Behavioral
Sciences Research Institute and the AAG Rural Geography
Specialty Group for supporting this research.
References
Aktar, M.W., Sengupta, D., Chowdhury, A., 2009. Impact of pesticides use in
agriculture: their benefits and hazards. Interdiscipl. Toxicol. 2 (1), 112.
Barrett, C.B., 2010. Measuring food insecurity. Science 327 (5967), 825828.
Bennett, Jane, 2010. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Duke University
Press, Durham.
Bonnin, C., Turner, S., 2012. At what price rice? Food security, livelihood
vulnerability, and state interventions in upland northern Vietnam. Geoforum
43 (1), 95105.
Coates, J., 2013. Build it back better: deconstructing food security for improved
measurement and action. Global Food Secur. 2 (3), 188194.
Coates, J., Frongillo, E.A., Rogers, B.L., Webb, P., Wilde, P.E., Hosuer, R., 2006.
Commonalities in the experience of household food insecurity across cultures:
what are measures missing? J. Nutr. 136 (5), 1438S1448S.
Crum, A.J., Corbin, W.R., Brownell, K.D., Salovey, P., 2011. Mind over milkshakes:
mindsets, not just nutrients, determine ghrelin response. Health Psychol. 30 (4),
424429 (discussion 430-1).
Del Casino, V., 2010. Living with and experiencing (dis)ease. In: Brown, T.,
McLafferty, S., Moon, G. (Eds.), A Companion to Health and Medical
Geography. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester, UK, pp. 188204.
Fan, S., Pandya-Lorch, R., 2012. Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and Health.
International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC.
FAO, 2001. State of World Food Insecurity. FAO, Rome.
Finnis, E., 2007. The political ecology of dietary transitions: changing production
and consumption patterns in the Kolli Hills, India. Agric. Hum. Values 24 (3),
343353.
Finnis, E., 2008. Economic wealth, food wealth, and millet consumption. Food Cult.
Soc. 11 (4), 464485.
Foucault, M., 1978. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. I. Pantheon Books,
New York.
Gillespie, S., Kadiyala, S., 2012. Exploring the agriculture-nutrition disconnect in
India. In: Shenggen, F., Pandya-Lorch, R. (Eds.), Reshaping Agriculture for
Nutrition and Health. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington,
DC, pp. 173183.
Goodman, D., 1999. Agro-food studies in the age of ecology. Sociol. Ruralis 39 (1),
1738.
Gopalan, C., Rama Satri, B.V., Balasaubramanian, S.C., 1971. Nutritive Value of Indian
Foods. National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.

C.E. Nichols / Geoforum 64 (2015) 182191

Gusain, R., 2014, November. Uttarakhand Cracks the Code for Making Money. India
Today.
Guthman, J., 2012. Opening up the black box of the body in geographical obesity
research: toward a critical political ecology of fat. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 102
(5), 951957.
Guthman, J., Mansfield, B., 2012. The implications of environmental epigenetics: a
new direction for geographic inquiry on health, space, and naturesociety
relations. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 37 (4), 486504.
Harriss-White, B., 2008. Introduction: Indias rainfed agricultural dystopia. Eur. J.
Dev. Res. 20 (4), 549561.
Hawkes, C., Turner, R., Waage, J., 2012. Current and Planned Research on Agriculture
for Improved Nutrition: A Mapping and a Gap Analysis. DFID. <http://www.lidc.
org.uk/_assets/Final%20report%20230712.pdf> (accessed 04.05.14).
Hayes-Conroy, A., Hayes-Conroy, J., 2008. Taking back taste: feminism, food and
visceral politics. Gender Place Cult. 15 (5), 461473.
Hayes-Conroy, J., Hayes-Conroy, A., 2012. Veggies and visceralities: a political
ecology of food and feeling. Emotion Space Soc. 6, 8190.
Headey, D.D., Hoddinott, J., Ali, D., Tesfaye, R., Dereje, M., 2014. The Other Asian
Enigma Explaining the Rapid Reduction of Undernutrition in Bangladesh. IFPRI
Discussion Paper 01358.
HUNGaMA, 2011. HUNGaMA: Fighting Hunger & Malnutrition: Survey Report.
IFPRI (International Food Policy Research Institute), 2011. Leveraging Agriculture
for Improving Nutrition and Health: The Way Forward, Washington, DC.
International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and Macro International, 2007.
National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 20052006, vol. I. IIPS, India, Mumbai.
Jones, A., Ngure, F., 2013. What are we assessing when we measure food security? A
compendium and review of current metrics. Adv. Nutr.: Int. Rev. J. 4, 481505.
Kadiyala, S., Joshi, P.K., Mahendra, D.S., Nanda, K.T., Vyas, V., 2012. A nutrition
secure India: role of agriculture. Econ. Polit. Weekly XLVII (8), 2125.
Khera, R., 2006. Mid-day meals in primary schools: achievements and challenges.
Econ. Polit. Weekly 41 (46), 47424750.
Khera, R., 2011. Indias public distribution system: utilisation and impact. J. Dev.
Stud. 47 (7), 10381060.
King, B., 2010. Political ecologies of health. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 34 (1), 3855.
Klennert, K. (Ed.), 2005. Achieving Food and Nutrition Security: Actions to Meet the
Global Challenge. Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH
Capacity Building International, Germany.
Kumar, M., 2012. Invoking everydayness in poverty studies in India. Econ. Polit.
Weekly XLVII (38), 7181.
Langer, E.J., 2009. Counterclockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility.
Random House Publishing Group.
Longhurst, R., Ho, E., Johnston, L., 2008. Using the Body as an Instrument of
Research: Kimchi and Pavlova. Area 40 (2), 208217.
Longhurst, R., Johnston, L., Ho, E., 2009. A visceral approach: cooking at home with
migrant women in Hamilton, New Zealand. Trans. Inst. Br. Geogr. 34, 333345.
Mansfield, B., 2008. Health as a nature society question. Environ. Plann. A 40 (5),
10151019.
Mansfield, B., 2011. Is fish health food or poison? Farmed fish and the material
production of un/healthy nature*. Antipode 43 (2), 413434.
Mayer, J.D., 1996. The political ecology of disease as one new focus for medical
geography. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 20 (4), 441456.
Mayer, J.D., 2000. Geography, ecology and emerging infectious diseases. Soc. Sci.
Med. 50 (78), 937952.
Meinzen-Dick, R., Behrman, C., Menon, P., Quisumbing, A., 2012. Gender: a key
dimension linking agricultural programs to improved nutrition and health. In:
Shenggen, F., Pandya-Lorch, R. (Eds.), Reshaping Agriculture for Nutrition and
Health. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, DC.
Menon, P., Deolalikar, A., Bhaskar, A., 2009. India State Hunger Index: Comparisons
of Hunger across States. International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)/
WeltHungerHilfe/University of California-Riverside, Washington, DC, Bonn, and
Riverside.
Mittal, S., Tripathi, G., Sethi, D., 2008. Development Strategy for the Hill Districts of
Uttarakhand. Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.
Mooij, J., 1998. Food policy and politics: the political economy of the public
distribution system in India. J. Peasant Stud. 25 (2), 77101.
Nevill, H.R., 1904. District Gazetteer of the United Provinces Nainital, vol. XXXIV.
Allahabad 1904.
Nichter, M., 2002. The political ecology of health in India: indigestion as sign and
symptom of defective modernization. In: Connor, L.H., Samuel, G. (Eds.), Healing
Powers and Modernity: Traditional Medicine, Shamanism, and Science in Asian
Societies. Greenwood Press, pp. 97118.
Noack, A.-L., Pouw, N.R.M., 2015. A blind spot in food and nutrition security: where
culture and social change shape the local food plate. Agric. Hum. Values 32 (2),
169182.

191

Pande, V., 1999. The Making of Modern Kumaun c. 18151930 with a Comparative
Perspective on Western Nepal. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Delhi.
Panelli, R., Tipa, G., 2009. Beyond foodscapes: considering geographies of
Indigenous well-being. Health Place 15 (2), 455465.
Parr, H., 2002. Medical geography: diagnosing the body in medical and health
geography, 19992000. Prog. Hum. Geog. 26 (2), 240251.
Pawar, S., 2008. Inaugural Address at the Third National Conference on KVK. Govind
Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand
India, 27 December 2008. <http://icarzcu3.gov.in/nconference/INAUGURAL_
ADDRESS.pdf> (accessed 05.05.14).
Planning Commission, Government of India (PC-GOI), 2009. Uttarakhand
Development Report. New Delhi, India.
Probyn, E., 2000. Carnal Appetites: FoodSexIdentities. Routledge.
Quisumbing, A., Brown, L., Feldstein, H., Haddad, L., Pena, C., 1995. Women: The Key
to Food Security. Washington, DC.
Ramamurthy, P., 2003. Material consumers, fabricating subjects: perplexity, global
connectivity discourses, and transnational feminist research. Cult. Anthropol.
18 (4), 524550.
Ramamurthy, P., 2011. Rearticulating caste: the global cottonseed commodity chain
and the paradox of smallholder capitalism in south India. Environ. Plann. A 43
(5), 10351056.
Rao, K.P.C., 2008. Changes in dry land agriculture in the semi-arid tropics of India,
19752004. Eur. J. Dev. Res. 20 (4), 562578.
Richmond, C., Elliott, S.J., Matthews, R., Elliott, B., 2005. The political ecology of
health: perceptions of environment, economy, health and well-being among
Namgis First Nation. Health Place 11 (4), 349365.
Rosegrant, M.W., Cline, S.A., 2003. Global food security: challenges and policies.
Science 302 (5652), 19171919.
Ruel, M.T.M., Alderman, H., 2013. Nutrition-sensitive interventions and
programmes: how can they help to accelerate progress in improving maternal
and child nutrition? Lancet 382 (9891), 536551.
Save the Children, 2009. Freedom from Hunger for Children under Six. New Delhi.
Shah, A., 2012. Priority changes for strengthening womens role as producers,
processors, and providers of food and nutrition. IDS Bull. 43 (S1), 4048.
Sharma, K.D., 2011. Rain-fed agriculture could meet the challenges of food security
in India. Curr. Sci. 100 (11), 16151617.
Singh, P., Raghuvanshi, R.S., 2012. Finger millet for food and nutritional security. Afr.
J. Food Sci. 6 (4), 7784.
Spears, D., 2013. The Nutritional Value of Toilets: How Much International Variation
in Child Height can Sanitation Explain? Working Paper. Centre for Development
Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
Stassart, P.P., Whatmore, S.S.J., 2003. Metabolising risk: food scares and the un/remaking of Belgian beef. Environ. Plann. A 35 (3), 449462.
Sultana, F., 2008. Gendered waters, poisoned wells: political ecology of the arsenic
crisis in Bangladesh. In: Lahiri-Dutt, K. (Ed.), Fluid Bonds: Views on Gender and
Water. Street Publishers, Kolkata, pp. 362386.
Sultana, F., 2009. Fluid lives: subjectivities, gender and water in rural Bangladesh.
Gender Place Cult. 16 (4), 427444.
Sultana, F., 2012. Producing contaminated citizens: toward a naturesociety
geography of health and well-being. Ann. Assoc. Am. Geogr. 102 (5), 1165
1172.
Tiwari, P., 2008. Land use changes in Himalaya and their impacts on environment,
society and economy: a study of the lake region in Kumaon Himalaya, India.
Adv. Atmos. Sci. 25 (6), 10291042.
Tiwari, P.C., Joshi, B., 2005. Environmental changes and status of water resources in
Kumaon Himalaya. In: Libor, J., Haigh, M., Prasad, H. (Eds.), Sustainable
Management of Headwater Resources: Research from Africa and Asia. United
Nations University, Tokyo, Japan, pp. 109123.
Tulachan, P.M., Neupane, A., 1999. Livestock in Mixed Farming Systems of the Hindu
Kush-Himalayas: Trends and Sustainability. Food and Agriculture Organization/
International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. Kathmandu, Nepal.
UNICEF, 2014. India: The Children Nutrition. <http://www.unicef.org/india/
children_2356.htm> (accessed 04.05.14).
Vollmer, S., Harttgen, K., Subramanyam, M.a., Finlay, J., Klasen, S., Subramanian, S.V.,
2014. Association between economic growth and early childhood
undernutrition: evidence from 121 Demographic and Health Surveys from 36
low-income and middle-income countries. Lancet Global Health 2 (4), e225
e234.
von Grebmer et al., 2014. Global Hunger Index: The Challenge of Hidden Hunger.
Welthungerhilfe/International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)/Concern
Worldwide, Bonn, Washington, DC, Dublin.
Whatmore, S., 2002. Hybrid Geographies. SAGE Publications Ltd., London.
Williams, R., 1985. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. Oxford
University Press.