NATIONAL FOOD SECURITY ACT

Shaina Patel, TYBA

Definition:

The National Food Security Act (NFSA, 2013) has been introduced to meet the challenges posed by fast population growth, deprivation, deteriorating ecosystems, increasing price of food and unsustainable agricultural practices. It aims to provide for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices for people to live a life with dignity and for matters connected therewith or incidental thereto’.

Main aspects of NFSA:

The people who will benefit from this Bill can legally claim specified quantities of food grains at highly subsidised prices. The Targeted Public Distribution System (TDPS) will provide food grains (5 kilograms per person, per month) in priority households[AT1], and 35 kilograms per month to households under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) – a scheme targeting the poorest people. This government sponsored scheme was introduced in December 2000 by the NDA government. The subsidized prices of food grains are Rs. 3 per kg of rice, Rs. 2 per kg of wheat and Rs. 1 per kilogram of coarse grains.

The Bill also gives “legal rights to women and children and other special groups such as destitute, homeless, disaster and emergency affected persons and persons living in starvation, to receive meals free of charge or at an affordable price, as the case may be.”

Reason for NFSA:

The Sampoorna Grameen Rozgar Yojana was created by merging two existing programs i.e. Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) and Jawahar Samridhi Yojana (JGSY). (National Rural Employment Programme (NREP) and Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (RLEGP) were merged to create the JGSY). These programs were targeted at the rural poor and were ineffective. These wage employment programs were created with the intention of creating employment opportunities for the poor during the lean season. The Central government also provided food grains free of cost to distribute to the rural poor through panchayats. The creation of physical and intrinsic assets for the people whose incomes lie below the officially defined poverty line [AT2]was intended to give them a stable flow of returns leading to their economic stability (i.e. giving them the ability to provide sustenance for their families and themselves). These efforts, however, did not achieve their aim.

Furthermore, India’s increasing poverty rates and its encounter with crises (financial crisis[AT3], rupee depreciation, etc.) has had a detrimental effect on the state of its national food security. The impoverished household’s capacity to survive has been affected by these shocks.  Though the National Sample Survey (NSS, 64th round) shows a decline in the proportion of people not receiving a minimum of two square meals a day, in 1993-94 and 2009-10, starvation still persists. The number of people being pushed into food insecurity is increasing greatly. Thus, the PDS may serve as a reasonable solution to tackling the problem of food insecurity. Providing access to affordable food will be effective in curing mass hunger.