The Right to Food in India—Entitlements as Government Responsibility to Entitlements as Government Obligation

Abstract

The Indian government’s primary food security strategy has been on the public distribution system (PDS), which contributed to household food security. It did this by providing subsidised prices on grains, edible oils and other essential commodities, aimed at moderating the open market (Chand in Econ Polit Wkly 40(11):1055–1062, 2005). The PDS became universal from 1966 onwards and was reformed in the mid-1990s into a targeted system as a result of these operational issues. The aim was to reduce government expenditure and make the system more efficient, but the government had promised the politically influential farmer’s lobby to not decrease the amount of grain purchased and, coupled with the integration of Indian agriculture with the global market, forced to increase the purchasing price to match the international market. Resultantly, at the turn of the twenty-first century, the Indian government held large amounts of cereal stocks rotting away in storage facilities while hunger remained a pervasive, widespread issue. In 2001, these mounting issues came to a head in a court case known as the ‘Right to Food’ case. The court case triggered debates on the right to food as a legal entitlement rather than merely as a moral obligation in the Indian policy sphere.The chapter will address the following issues:

• 1. The Right to Food in India—From entitlements as government discretion to government obligation

• 2. The Right to Food in India—‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’

• 3. The National Food Security Bill