The Battle Against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance, and the World Bank

Devi Sridhar

Research output: Book/ReportBook

Abstract / Description of output

The foreword of this book is written by Amartya Sen, Nobel Prize winning economist.
Unprecedented new study of a key area of activity of the World Bank.

We live in an increasingly prosperous world, yet the estimated number of undernourished people has risen, and will continue to rise with the doubling of food prices. A large majority of those affected are living in India. Why have strategies to combat hunger, especially in India, failed so badly? How did a nation that prides itself on booming economic growth come to have half of its preschool population undernourished?

Using the case study of a World Bank nutrition project in India, this book takes on these questions and probes the issues surrounding development assistance, strategies to eliminate undernutrition, and how hunger should be fundamentally understood and addressed.
Throughout the book, the underlying tension between choice and circumstance is explored. How much are individuals able to determine their life choices? How much should policy-makers take underlying social forces into account when designing policy? This book examines the possibilities, and obstacles, to eliminating child hunger.

This book is not just about nutrition. It is an attempt to uncover the workings of power through a close look at the structures, discourses, and agencies through which nutrition policy operates. In this process, the source of nutrition policy in the World Bank is traced to those affected by the policies in India.
Readership: Scholars and students of development studies and international political economy.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherOxford University Press
Number of pages250
ISBN (Print)9780199549962
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2008

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'The Battle Against Hunger: Choice, Circumstance, and the World Bank'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this