Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Food practices of a people is product of multiple factors. People often eat what they prefer to eat, but it is not so simple always. Sometimes they eat what is available to them or what they are asked to eat. Thus, their natural or cultural preferences are interfered with by endogenous as well as exogenous forces capable of influencing their opinion. In India and its neighbouring countries, religion, caste and analogous systems of social ranking of a group of people, and their economic standing, often delimit their food practices. The state and market forces too influence food related behaviour of people by exercising control over production and trade of food and its availability and accessibility to the consumers. The present volume envisages understanding power relation between those who eat and those who decide (or at least try to decide) what the eaters should eat. As factors prompting food practices are multiple, manifestations of power relations are bound to be varied. Different chapters of this volume have examined food practices as expressions of varied forms of power relations. while examining the core issues, authors with various academic backgrounds possessing varied research experience have highlighted different dimensions of those common issues"--