Ninth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

With a view to address the problem of access to food and malnutrition, the Government of India has launched a number of social security programmes and the latest one is the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA 2013). The mandate of the Act has been to provide food and nutritional security by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people to live a life with dignity and for matters connected therewith. In view of the fact that the Act had received mixed reaction from different sections of our society including various political parties, an attempt is made in this paper to critically examine the various ramifications of the Act in term of supply/access of food grains in the long run, extent of success of the scheme in execution, security in providing adequate food to the targeted groups, and above all, on sustainability of the programme. Further we have investigated the scope of the Act in fulfilling the planned goal of economic efficiency and equity. With a view to suggest some policy alternatives, we have also examined the previous policies of the Government to ensure food security to the down trodden section of our population.