Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES) Tool and its Application in India: A Critical Review

Abstract

 The article critically reviews the Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES), a global tool developed by the FAO to assess food insecurity through self reported experiences over a 12-month period. While FIES supports global monitoring under the SDG Goal 2 (Zero Hunger), the article highlights several limitations when applied to India—such as recall bias, ambiguous question wording, and its focus on household-level data that obscures individual experiences. A detailed analysis of the tool’s questions reveals cultural and contextual gaps that may lead to misinterpretation, calling for revisions that better reflect Indian dietary habits and socio-economic diversity. The article also includes findings from a perception survey on healthy and nutritious food among Indian respondents, which showed wide variability in definitions, ranging from traditional home-cooked meals to modern high-protein diets. The author echoes concerns raised by the Indian government over the reliability of FIES data used in global hunger reports due to small, unrepresentative samples and lack of methodological transparency. Concluding that hunger measurement in India demands a more robust, locally adapted approach, Author recommends large-scale, nationally representative surveys conducted by agencies like NSSO to ensure accurate and meaningful insights into food insecurity.