Rural India’s monthly per capita cereal consumption fell below 10 kgs in 2022-23

In February, the government had released a factsheet based on the findings of the report, it has now released the full report which offers granular data.

Within cereals, the percentage share in total per capita cereal consumption in rural households was higher for rice at 55.35 kgs followed by wheat at 40.93 kgs, and in urban India, rice was also ahead at 53.20 kgs, and wheat at 44.53 kgs in 2022-23.

And, when it comes to the share of cereals in total expenditure, in rural India it varies from 3 percent (in Haryana, Kerala and Punjab) to 7 percent (in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal). In urban areas, the share varies from 3 percent (in Haryana, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab and Tamil Nadu) to 6 percent (in Bihar and Jharkhand).

In the rural food basket, the percentage of monthly per capita consumption expenditure or MPCE on cereals more than halved to 4.89 percent in 2022-23 from 10.69 percent in 2011-12. Meanwhile, the share of consumption expenditure on milk and milk products has gone up slightly, while that of vegetables edged down.

In Urban India, spending on cereals is down sharply, while that on milk and milk products went up.

The weight of food items in the MPCE fell to 46.38 percent in 2022-23 for rural India from 52.90 percent in 2011-12 and to 39.17 percent for urban India from 42.62 percent in 2011-12.