National Food Security Act: Implementation Challenges

摘要

The National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed by the Indian Parliament in September 2013. For over four years, since the UPA government in June 2009 announced its intent to bring in legislation on food security until it was finally passed, there was intense debate and discussion on what the act must contain. Various drafts of the bill were put forward. The initial draft bill by the Ministry of Food was widely criticised for a lack of vision, being too narrow and only putting into law the PDS in the current form without addressing any of the well-known flaws in its implementation (See righttofoodindia.org for various versions of the NFSB and critiques). The National Advisory Council (NAC), under the Chairpersonship of Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, drafted its version of the bill, which was broader in its vision and took on many suggestions of the civil society, such as entitlements for children and women, community kitchens, destitute feeding, interventions for people living in starvation, and a strong grievance redressal mechanism. The NAC Bill however failed to address the issues related to production, procurement and adequate storage of food. Further, the system it laid out for entitlements under the PDS once again had the same problems that the existing targeted PDS was experiencing across the country. The bill then underwent further changes based on the recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee. At this stage, the framework for the PDS was changed, delinking it from the poverty line based targeting, but was still not universal. Based on the standing committee recommendations, however, the Government also deleted provisions for community kitchens and destitute feeding programmes which were part of earlier versions.