Context: The Union Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Ram Vilas Paswan met State Food Secretaries and State government officials along with officials of Food Corporation of India (FCI), Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC) and State Warehousing Corporations (SWCs)in New Delhi. Shri Paswan discussed various issues pertaining to efficient implementation of national food security act.

National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013:

As passed by the Parliament, Government has notified the National Food Security Act, 2013 on 10th September, 2013.

The objective is to provide for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people to live a life with dignity.

Key features:

• The Act provides for coverage of upto 75% of the rural population and upto 50% of the urban population for receiving subsidized foodgrains under Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), thus covering about two-thirds of the population.
• The eligible persons will be entitled to receive 5 Kgs of foodgrains per person per month at subsidised prices of Rs. 3/2/1 per Kg for rice/wheat/coarse grains.
• The existing Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) households, which constitute the poorest of the poor, will continue to receive 35 Kgs of foodgrains per household per month.
• The Act also has a special focus on the nutritional support to women and children. Besides meal to pregnant women and lactating mothers during pregnancy and six months after the child birth, such women will also be entitled to receive maternity benefit of not less than Rs. 6,000.
• Children upto 14 years of age will be entitled to nutritious meals as per the prescribed nutritional standards.
• In case of non-supply of entitled foodgrains or meals, the beneficiaries will receive food security allowance.
• The Act also contains provisions for setting up of grievance redressal mechanism at the District and State levels.
• Separate provisions have also been made in the Act for ensuring transparency and accountability.

Ways to increase the efficiency:

• Use of Information Technology right from the time of purchase of food grains till its distributionwill help in increasing the overall efficiency of the entire process, while maintaining transparency and curbing corruption.
• It is imperative that there is a seamless flow of information online between the FCI and States and therefore they need to be integrated so that exact information about how much food grain has been procured from which mandi, which warehouse it is stored in and for how long and when it has been released for distribution can be available.
• There should also be information about the quality of food grains at the time of purchase, storage conditions in the warehouse, when it is given to PDS shops and when the shops have distributed it to the beneficiaries.
• Move towards One Nation One Ration Card (RC) which will ensure all beneficiaries especially migrants can access PDS across the nation from any PDS shop of their own choice. This will provide freedom to the beneficiaries as they will not be tied to any one PDS shop and reduce their dependence on shop owners and curtail instances of corruption.
• Expand the coverage of Integrated Management of PDS (IMPDS) to all the states.

Why ensure food security?

The basic concept of food security globally is to ensure that all people, at all times, should get access to the basic food for their active and healthy life and is characterized by availability, access, utilization and stability of food. Though the Indian Constitution does not have any explicit provision regarding right to food, the fundamental right to life enshrined in Article 21 of the Constitution may be interpreted to include right to live with human dignity, which may include the right to food and other basic necessities.