Practice Test 29

Food security is a constitutional and moral imperative for a nation where a significant proportion of the population has historically lived with inadequate access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food, and the government has developed a comprehensive and multi-layered food security architecture that combines the cultivation of sufficient food to meet national needs with an extensive distribution system to ensure that food reaches the most vulnerable sections of society. The National Food Security Act of 2013, which confers the right to food as a legal entitlement rather than a discretionary welfare benefit, provides for the supply of subsidised food grains to approximately sixty-seven percent of the country's population, with five kilograms of rice, wheat, or coarse cereals per person per month at highly subsidised prices of one to three rupees per kilogram for priority households identified by state governments within the coverage determined by the central government. The Antyodaya Anna Yojana, serving the poorest of the poor households who are identifiable through specific livelihood and vulnerability criteria, provides the highest quantum of thirty-five kilograms per household per month at the lowest prices, recognising that the most destitute households have the greatest food need and the least ability to purchase even subsidised food. The Public Distribution System, operating through a network of over five lakh fair price shops across the country, delivers the food entitlements under the National Food Security Act to beneficiaries after collecting biometric authentication through Aadhaar-enabled point-of-sale devices, ensuring that the rations reach the intended beneficiaries and preventing the pilferage and diversion that had plagued the system under the earlier manual operations. The Food Corporation of India is the nodal agency responsible for procuring food grains from farmers at the minimum support price in major producing states, storing the procured grain in a network of warehouses across the country, and transporting it to designated state-level depots for onward distribution through the public distribution system. One Nation One Ration Card portability, which allows beneficiaries to lift their food grain entitlement from any fair price shop in the country regardless of where their card was issued, has provided crucial food security to migrant workers who move between states for employment and previously lost access to their rations for the months they spent away from their registered state. The Mid-Day Meal Scheme, providing hot cooked meals to over eleven crore children in government and aided primary and upper primary schools on every school day, serves simultaneously as a food security intervention, an incentive for school attendance and retention, and a nutritional supplementation programme that addresses the endemic undernutrition among school-age children in India. The Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, launched during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide additional free food grains to NFSA beneficiaries, was continued and extended multiple times before being made a permanent feature by merging the free grain component with the regular NFSA distribution from January 2023.