Changing Food Habits in Contemporary India: Discourses and Practices among the Middle Classes

Résumé 0

This chapter questions how socioeconomic changes affect the practices and representations related to food in contemporary India. While food has ritual, social, economic and nutritional meanings, mass production, vertical integration of supply chains and mass consumption – brought about by rising incomes, commodification of goods and services – are reconfiguring the Indians’ food habits. Economic growth and urbanisation bring about a food transition, but also a fragmentation of practices due to increasing social inequalities. Food patterns differ according to region, religion, caste, financial means, residential area and also to the age and gender of the individuals. In urban areas, new food environments, new equipment and new foodstuffs have contributed to the diversification of diets. However, chronic and acute malnutrition are still prevalent. Even though meat is still eaten in low quantities, it has become a highly contentious and political foodstuff. Practices of meat consumption or abstinence are leveraged to claim power or purity. Food change is embedded in systems of values and of power that the analysis in terms of ‘food transition’ unfortunately often obfuscates. More than a standardisation of diets, food in contemporary India displays models of renewed and increasing spatial compartmentalisation and social segmentation.