Food and nutritional security is key to achieve overall Socio-economic development and ensuring a productive workforce for a country. Food security ensures that all people, at all times, have access to sufficient and safe food while Nutrition security means access by all people at all times to the adequate utilization and absorption of nutrients in food.
The Public Distribution System (PDS) is one of the largest safety net programmes in India,set up to provide subsidised grains to the poor.

Food and nutritional security in India can be looked through following dimensions:

1.Availability of Food (Physical Access).
2.Accessibility (Economic Access).
3.Absorption (Nutritional Outcomes).
4.Stability (Regular supply of nutritious food to beneficiaries).

The role of PDS in providing food and nutritional security in India can be elaborated as below:

Food Security: The National Food Security Act, 2013 seeks to make the right to food a statutory right.The Act implements some key changes to the existing TPDS securing Food Security in India. PDS provides a food security net by:

1. Insulates beneficiaries from inflation and price volatility in food crops through buffer stock.
2. Ensures entitlement is used for food grains only.
3. Well-developed network of FPS ensures access to food grains even in remote areas
4.National Food Security Act, 2013 uses PDS to provide for right to food to poor.
5. Computerisation and Digitisation of PDS has provided for better beneficiary identification and hence delivery of food to needy.
6. Universal PDS of Tamil Nadu ensures no one is left behind in ensuring their food and nutritional security.
7. Chhattisgarh government implemented the Core PDS scheme, making the ration shop owners are answerable to the consumers, thus creating an environment of confidence and ease towards PDS.

Nutrition Security has been guaranteed by PDS specifically by few states in following ways:

1.Better accessibility to food implies energy intake for poor people,especially those under AAY, has been made possible due to PDS at subsidised prices.
2.Chattisgarh through PDS provides pulse, gram,sugar, iodized salt to the beneficiaries to ensure nutrition security in addition to food security.
3.Distribution of food under Mid-Day Meal (MOM) scheme through PDS fights undernutrition (calorie deficiency) and malnutrition (protein deficiency) across the country among children.
4.The basket of items under PDS can be broadened to include other items for nutritional security such as pulses, eggs (as done in MOM).

PDS can act as a robust distribution infrastructure to secure the calorific and nutritional needs of the people. As seen in the above examples if the challenges in the system are overcome with effective reforms PDS can certainly play a pivotal role in bringing convergence and making India's two important missions-food and nutrition security-successful.