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The National Food Security Act was enacted by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution by end-December 2013. India’s most ambitious and world’s largest social welfare programme provides legal right to about 82 crore people for subsidised foodgrains—a historic initiative towards ensuring food and nutritional security. Major highlights of the programme are as given below:
(i) It will cover upto 75 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban population (around two thirds of the total popultion) with uniform entitlement of 5 kg foodgrains per month at highly subsidised prices of Rs. 3, Rs. 2 and Rs. 1 per kg for rice, wheat and coarse grains, respectively. The poorest of poor households continue to receive 35 kg foodgrains per household per month under the Antyodaya Anna Yojna at the same subsidised prices.
(ii) It provisions for special focus on nutritional support to women and children— pregnant women and lactating mothers, besides being entitled to nutritious meals as per the prescribed nutritional norms will
also receive maternity benefit of at least of Rs. 6,000. Children in the age group of 6 months to 14 years will be entitled to take home ration or hot cooked food as per prescribed nutritional norms.
(iii) Eldest woman of eighteen years of age or above will be head of the household for issue of ration card, and if not available, the eldest male member is to be the head of the household.
(iv) For effective implementation, the Act also contains provisions for reforms in PDS through doorstep delivery of foodgrains, application of information and communication technology (ICT) including end-to-end computerisation, leveraging ‘Aadhaar’ for identification of beneficiaries, diversification of commodities under TPDS, etc.
(v) The Act provisions state and district level redressal mechanism with designated officers. The states will be allowed to use the existing machinery for District Grievance Redressal Officer (DGRO), State Food Commission, if they so desire, to save expenditure on establishment of new redressal set up. It also provides for penalty on public servants or authority, if found guilty of failing to comply with the relief recommended by the DGRO.
(vi) Provisions have also been made for disclosure of records relating to PDS, social audits and setting up of Vigilance Committees in order to ensure transparency and accountability.
The work of identification of eligible households is left to the states/UTs, which may frame their own criteria or use Social Economic and Caste Census (SECC) data, if they so desire. The central government will provide funds to states/UTs in case of short supply of food grains from the central pool. In case of non-supply of food grains or meals to entitled persons, the concerned state/UT governments will be required to provide such food security allowance as may be prescribed by the central government to the beneficiaries. In order to address the concern of the states regarding additional financial burden, The central government will provide assistance to the states towards cost of intra-state transportation, handling of foodgrains and FPS dealers’ margin, for which norms will be developed. This will ensure timely transportation and efficient handling of foodgrains.
While enacting the Act, the Ministry estimated an annual foodgrains
requirement of 61.23 MT, which will accrue estimated food subsidy of Rs.1,24,724 crore. Meanwhile, a High Level Committee (headed by Shanta Kumar), by early 2015, suggested the Government of India to revise the covergare population under the Act from 67 to 40 per cent. The recommendation was severely criticised by the experts and the political parties in the country. The government is yet to take the final call on the issue
.