The Covid-19 Crisis and People’s Right to Food

India’s national lockdown in 2020, in response to the Covid-19 crisis, was one of the harshest in the world. Multiple household surveys indicate that the lockdown and the economic recession that followed led to a severe nutrition crisis. Food deprivation was most intense during the national lockdown but continued throughout the year. Relief measures helped, but they compensated for just a fraction of people’s income losses, even among poor households. It is doubtful that employment, income and nutrition among informal-sector workers and their families ever regained their pre-lockdown levels before a second wave of the Covid-19 epidemic hit the country in early 2021. The Indian government’s failure to put in place more effective relief measures is a serious denial of people’s right to food. With relief measures off the table in 2021, at the time of writing, there is a serious danger of another wave of intense food deprivation. [This paper was prepared for the Centre for Health Equity, Law and Policy (C-HELP).]