“When fields are abundant yet plates remain empty, should we still call this hunger a matter of poverty or name it for what it is: a system designed to exclude? Hidden hunger isn't hidden to those who experience it, it's only hidden to those with the power to address it. So what does an Ambedkarite food economy look like?
The adolescents of Melghat and Gadchiroli are not asking for charity. They're demanding what the Constitution guarantees. Their hunger is our collective failure.”
In Melghat’s Karmagram, the school bell had long fallen silent, and children were spilling out into dusty lanes. Among them was twelve-year-old Durgavati, her thin wrists clasping the hand of her younger brother. They walked without chatter, eyes lowered, steps heavy, as though some invisible burden pressed upon them. At home, their mother stirred a pot of watery rice and dal, the only meal they could count on when the ration shop opened on time. The same family that ate this watery meal spent their days cultivating jowar swaying in the evening breeze and vegetables ripening in the soil on other people’s land. Their labour nourished the market, while their own plates remained barren of the very foods they helped grow.
When fields are abundant yet plates remain empty, should we still call this hunger a matter of poverty or name it for what it is: a system designed to exclude?
This quiet contradiction—with nutrient-rich crops grown but never eaten, children fed but never nourished, is the face of what is termed hidden hunger. It does not announce itself with famine’s spectacle, but in the tired eyes of schoolchildren, in growth charts that dip lower each year, and in the whispered confessions of mothers who cannot feed their children what they grow with their own hands. In Maharashtra, a land of agricultural plenty, this silent crisis continues to steal childhoods.
And behind it lies not accident or fate, but a caste-bound food economy that decides whose children will thrive and whose will stumble home listless in the twilight.
The Caste Stranglehold on Nutrition Pipelines
Behind this crisis lies what I call the “caste gatekeeping” of food networks and what Critical Agrarian Studies would term a “food regime”—with a system where political and social hierarchies determine who grows what, who eats what, and who profits. In my research on Maharashtra's B2B food networks, I've documented how that regime is organized not only by markets but by caste. The “caste gatekeeping” of food networks mirrors the global North-South divide described by Philip McMichael, a renowned Australian-American sociologist and expert in global development and food systems. McMichael’s influential work on food regimes analyzes how international political economy and social structures shape patterns of food production and distribution worldwide. In Maharashtra, tribal communities are pushed into producing cheap, protein-rich jowar (sorghum millet) or calcium-rich nachni (finger millet) for upper-caste middlemen, yet are denied access to those very nutrients in their own diets.
Community-based trade lobbies, dominated by Savarna merchants, create invisible barriers that push Adivasi produce to the margins. A tribal farmer growing protein-rich jowar or calcium-rich nachni finds herself forced to sell at farm-gate prices to upper-caste middlemen, who then profit from urban markets she cannot access. Meanwhile, her own children consume monotonous diets of subsidized wheat and rice, missing the very nutrients their family produces.
The credit system reinforces this stranglehold. Banks and traditional sahukars privilege caste networks, offering better terms to established upper-caste traders while tribal entrepreneurs struggle for working capital. When tribal women attempt to form self-help groups or cooperatives, they face linguistic barriers, business conducted in dominant caste idioms, and cultural resistance that treats their economic assertion as a threat to established hierarchies.
Perhaps most insidious is the absence of fair-trade systems. Where McMichael sees multinational corporations consolidating global markets, in Maharashtra, it is upper-caste trade associations and privatized procurement systems that play the same role. Dr. Ambedkar’s vision of Dalit and Bahujan cooperatives in Vidarbha once challenged this monopoly, but privatization has re-embedded caste hierarchy in market form, stripping tribal communities of both their produce and their health. Until these pipelines are democratised, hidden hunger will remain the everyday face of caste power.
To call it malnutrition is too soft—this is an apartheid of nutrition that condemns marginalized girls and their children to inherited hunger.
Nutritional Apartheid in Action
Maharashtra produces surplus grain, yet tribal adolescents in districts like Amravati, Nashik, and Gadchiroli face stunting rates exceeding 40%. In Melghat alone, malnutrition claimed 175 young lives in 2022-23, one child every alternate day. This isn't simply about poverty or geographic isolation.
The consequences manifest as “hidden hunger”, not calorie deficit but micronutrient malnutrition that stunts bodies and minds. In Nashik's tribal tehsils, 28.57% of children show severe malnutrition markers, while another 29.52% suffer poor nutritional status. Yet these same areas are surrounded by farms producing iron-rich leafy greens, vitamin A-rich orange vegetables, and protein-dense legumes.
Studies of Santhal tribal communities reveal they possess knowledge of over 100 indigenous foods, many rich in micronutrients that could address hidden hunger. But this nutritional wealth remains largely unutilized as communities transition toward market-dependent, monotonous modern diets. The transition isn't natural, it's manufactured by a food system that makes diverse, traditional foods economically inaccessible while flooding rural markets with processed, nutrient-poor alternatives.
Malnutrition among tribal communities is the result of deep social and economic inequalities. Tribal families often face exclusion from fair markets and resources due to caste-based discrimination and unequal access to food networks. These structural barriers create persistent food insecurity and poor nutritional outcomes for tribal communities.
The health consequences of malnutrition deeply affect adolescent girls from marginalized communities, including the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the Nomadic Tribes. Facing the combined challenges of caste discrimination, social exclusion, gender inequality, and geographic isolation, many suffer from anemia and poor nutrition. These conditions weaken their physical and cognitive development, reducing their ability to lead healthy lives, whether or not they become mothers. When such girls do become mothers, their children are often born with low birth weight, continuing a cycle of poor health that can persist across generations. To call it malnutrition is too soft—this is an apartheid of nutrition that condemns marginalized girls and their children to inherited hunger.
The Myth of “Backwardness”
This isn’t “natural tribal backwardness”, a racist trope that has long been deployed to explain away inequality while obscuring systemic causation. By attributing malnutrition or ill-health to the supposed primitiveness of Adivasi communities, mainstream narratives erase the role of structural discrimination. The myth of “backwardness” blames the victim, suggesting cultural deficiency or laziness, when in reality the crisis is manufactured through caste-capitalist control over land, credit, and markets.
In fact, the very foods dismissed as “tribal” or “inferior” – millets, forest produce, indigenous greens–with are today celebrated by nutritionists and global health advocates for their resilience and richness. Yet, when Adivasi communities grow and consume them, the practice is stigmatized; when urban elites repackage them as “superfoods,” they become aspirational. This double standard makes clear that hunger here is not the product of ignorance but of dispossession. To call it “backwardness” is to let the real culprits- the caste hierarchies embedded in our food economy- off the hook.
The Hegemony of Hunger
Upper-caste dominance in Maharashtra’s food chains does not survive merely through open coercion or exclusion. It also rests on what Antonio Gramsci, an influential Italian Marxist philosopher and political theorist, called hegemony–with the ability of dominant groups to manufacture consent and normalize their power as common sense. Gramsci’s theory explains how a ruling class maintains control not just by force but by shaping culture, ideas, and beliefs so that their dominance appears natural and unquestioned.In the food economy, this hegemony takes the form of everyday narratives that treat tribal foods and diets as “inferior” or “uncivilized,” while positioning subsidized wheat and polished rice as markers of modernity. The act of pushing jowar or nachni out of both markets and school midday meals is not simply an economic choice- it is a cultural project. By redefining what counts as “nutritious” or “valuable,” caste networks ensure that exclusion looks natural rather than deliberate.
This hegemonic logic works through language, taste, and aspiration. When tribal households begin preferring wheat chapatis over their traditional millets, despite knowing the latter are more nourishing, it reflects not just market distortion but ideological capture. Malnutrition, then, is not only a matter of poverty; it is the outcome of a caste-capitalist hegemony that convinces the marginalized to internalize their deprivation as progress. Hunger in this sense becomes a political tool: a silent mechanism that sustains the authority of those who monopolize the pipelines of food, profit, and cultural legitimacy.
An Ambedkarite Reading
Dr. Ambedkar identified land monopoly by caste Hindus as the fundamental material basis of graded inequality. Today, this principle has evolved: the pervasive food insecurity among tribal communities is not just an economic issue but a continuation of caste-based control- here, it manifests in the segmentation of access to nutrition itself. As Ambedkar observed, economic dependence cultivates social and cultural domination; Michel Foucault, a French philosopher and historian known for his influential work on power and social institutions, provides a crucial lens here with his concept of biopolitics–with showing how states and dominant groups exercise power not only over land or labor but over the very biological life of populations. When access to basic nutrition becomes stratified along caste lines, it transforms into a form of biopolitical control, shaping health, lifespan, and the very capacity to thrive. This systematic regulation of life processes by caste hierarchies ensures that marginal communities remain biologically and socially subordinate, perpetuating a cycle of inequality rooted in structural violence.
This isn’t merely a tribal issue, it's a national democracy crisis. When adolescents go hungry while surrounded by food abundance, when children die of malnutrition in one of India's wealthiest states, the Republic itself is malnourished. Dr. Ambedkar warned, political democracy without social and economic democracy remains a façade.
Maharashtra's experience with the Public Distribution System is illustrative. Despite legal frameworks, 50% of allocated food grains never reach tribal beneficiaries. Ration shop owners withhold cards, selling subsidized grain in open markets for profit. The 2021 Bombay High Court ruling that ordered food grain distribution to tribals even without Aadhaar linkage argues the case for tribals’ victory. But individual legal victories cannot dismantle systemic exclusion.
Ambedkar's demand for separate Dalit settlements wasn’t with separatism but recognition that economic liberation required breaking free from systems of dependence. Today's tribal nutrition crisis demands similar structural thinking. What would an Ambedkarite food economy look like? Community cooperatives with state backing, public nutrition systems rooted in dignity, and anti-discrimination regulation in food trade networks?
We need systematic intervention: nutritional justice policies that go beyond PDS rice and wheat to ensure access to diverse, culturally appropriate foods. Tribal and Dalit producer cooperatives with state credit guarantees and market access support. Anti-discrimination regulations in B2B trade, with monitoring mechanisms that treat food access as a civil right. Addressing hidden hunger among Maharashtra’s marginalized communities requires more than charity or sporadic interventions; it demands a fair, transparent, and accountable food system rooted in empowerment and data-driven action. The government must prioritize transparency at every step, from budget allocation and procurement to distribution and beneficiary tracking, ensuring that public data is accessible and verifiable by citizens and watchdogs alike.
Digital systems, such as electronic point-of-sale devices and real-time supply chain monitoring, should be scaled up statewide to minimize leakages and corruption. Nutritional checks must become routine in schools, with dedicated nutrition officers or experts providing personalized guidance to students and families. This combines technical rigour with compassionate, community-based support. Furthermore, launching sustained, culturally sensitive nutritional campaigns will raise awareness and build local capacity to combat malnutrition holistically. These efforts must be grounded in the principle that nutrition is a fundamental right, not a disposable welfare commodity.
Such systemic reforms grounded in transparency, data, and human dignity can pave the way for true food justice and honor the constitutional promise of equality. Only then can Maharashtra’s children thrive, free from the shadow of caste-based exclusion and hidden hunger.
Towards Nutritional Ganrajya
The path forward requires repoliticizing food justice within Ambedkarite movements. Too often, nutrition is treated as a technical issue for health departments when it's actually a question of structural power. Who controls food production, distribution, and access? How do caste networks shape these decisions? What democratic alternatives can challenge entrenched privileges?
We need research that maps caste composition across food value chains, from input suppliers to retail networks. We need policy frameworks that treat nutritional diversity as a civil right, not a market outcome. Most urgently, we need political movements that connect food justice to broader struggles for dignity and equality.
Dr. Ambedkar's vision of social democracy remains unfulfilled as long as children go hungry because of their caste or tribal identity. Hidden hunger isn't hidden to those who experience it, it's only hidden to those with the power to address it. A democracy that cannot feed its children with dignity has failed Ambedkar's dream and betrayed its own promises.
The adolescents of Melghat and Gadchiroli are not asking for charity. They're demanding what the Constitution guarantees: equality, dignity, and the right to a life free from discrimination. Their hunger is our collective failure. Their liberation is our democratic imperative.