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India’s cities are expanding while the country undergoes a marked nutrition transition. Urban residents depend more heavily on purchased food than rural households, making the location, price, safety and reliability of food outlets central to dietary choices. The health consequences are visible. The Indian Council of Medical Research–India Diabetes (ICMR-INDIAB) study reported national adult prevalence rates of 11.4 percent for diabetes, 35.5 percent for hypertension and 28.6 percent for generalised obesity, with metabolic disease generally more common in urban areas. Among urban women aged 15 to 49, overweight or obesity rose from 13 percent to 30.7 percent between 2005–06 and 2023-24. Undernutrition, overweightand diet-induced illnesses now overlap within the same Indian communities. Although urban nutrition is collectively shaped by agriculture, food safety, transport, municipal planning and health, policy remains fragmented across these departments.
India’s urban nutrition crisis demands integrated food governance that addresses unequal access, food safety and infrastructure gaps by aligning food systems, public health and municipal planning
Urban Food Environments: Access, Infrastructure and Health Inequities
Food environments are shaped by availability, prices, convenience and desirability, not outlet counts alone. Measurement tools designed in high-income countries may not translate well to informal and mixed retail settings, including those with street vendors and open-air wet markets. A scoping review of 251 studies across eight low- and middle-income countries found that research has concentrated on availability and vendor characteristics, while convenience, accessibility and affordability remain understudied, and most designs are cross-sectional. For India, this means moving from “distance to the nearest outlet” towards travel time, trip chaining, opening hours and transport cost. These constraints are most restrictive for women, daily-wage workers and residents of informal settlements.
The movement of food matters as much as the movement of households. Research from Bengaluru and Colombo shows that urban food markets in the Global South are multi-nodal systems of wholesalers, small traders, informal vendors and social networks, which can sustain affordable and diverse food baskets even during crises. In Bengaluruthe geography of informal food businesses is shaped by neighbourhood characteristics, social ties and the use of public space. A study of nine Indian cities found supply-chain distances ranging from 196 km for Pondicherry to 1,137 km for Chennai, alongside substantial differences in the proportions of residents consuming insufficient amounts of protein or calories.
Food and infrastructure systems in Southern cities are intertwined through hybrid formal and informal arrangements that sector-specific planning often overlooks. While street vendors serve as critical food infrastructure by clustering near transit and workplaces to provide affordable, late-day meals, they simultaneously operate under profound food safety constraints. A study of 170 street-food vendors in Pune found substantial gaps in potable water, temperature control, storage, waste management and safe transport. While the legal framework for vendor protection is established through the 2014 Street Vendors Actthe primary implementation gap lies in providing the physical infrastructure and basic services necessary for safe vending operations. As demonstrated in Hanoifood-safety policies that privilege modern retail over traditional markets risk reducing affordable food access when formalisation occurs without the enabling conditions it requires.
Although a 2026 multi-city Indian model identifies low physical activity as a leading threat, health risks remain highly stratified, with poorer populations facing inadequate basic infrastructure, whereas affluent cohorts carry a disproportionate share of lifestyle and dietary risks. Driven by compounding time constraintsurban and metropolitan households allocate more of their expenditure to processed foods and food away from home than rural or small-city peers, regardless of income. Beyond individual lifestyle choices, analysts highlight powerful commercial determinants that actively drive the expansion of packaged snacking and create structural hurdles for nutrition policy.
Bridging Sectoral Silos in Urban Food Governance
India’s current policy landscape remains severely constrained by sectoral silos, with food systems and urban health addressed separately despite their critical interdependencies. This fragmentation is illustrated by the planning gap identified in Bhubaneswar, where the reported 70 percent public willingness to adopt urban farming translates to only 35 percent active practice due to a lack of institutional enabling frameworks. To bridge this gap and translate these structural insights into actionable governance, municipal authorities should implement the following policy interventions:
India’s current policy landscape remains severely constrained by sectoral silos, with food systems and urban health addressed separately despite their critical interdependencies.
- Map the entire food system: Municipalities should map formal retailers, informal vendors, wholesale markets, transit hubs, and peri-urban supply nodes, tracking travel times, hours, prices, and infrastructure conditions.
- Designate markets and vending zones as civic infrastructure: Situate these zones near transit and employment centres, equipped with water, sanitation, drainage, waste disposal, lighting, and storage.
- Combine food-safety regulations with capital investment: Deploy a graded enforcement model that integrates municipal infrastructure improvements, vendor hygiene training, and proportionate inspections rather than relying solely on punitive policing.
- Embed active mobility into health and food planning: Establish safe walking and cycling corridors connecting homes, workplaces, and food outlets to simultaneously improve food access, physical activity, and urban air quality.
- Build systemic resilience through retail pluralism: Maintain diversified sourcing channels, functional wholesale hubs, and localised urban agriculture to cushion against supply shocks.
- Institutionalise intersectoral city governance: Align urban food policy with broader municipal transport, land use, and health priorities. Embed food management within planning and health authorities, reinforced by coordinated action on water, sanitation, and nutrition.
Implementing these interventions through coordinated municipal action is critical to building urban food environments that are safer, more accessible and equitable.
Shoba Suri is a Senior Fellow with ORF’s Health Initiative
Disclosure: Author acknowledges the use of Claude for narrative structuring and citation search
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