Inconsistencies in food safety law

The work on the proposed National Food Security Act began four months earlier by the National Advisory Council.

Panini Anand

NAC members worked hard to frame the Council’s food security proposals. The NAC seems to be expected to work within restriction imposed by the government, which do not leave scope for anything like what is required to address the problem of hunger and undernutrition in an effective manner.

The final NFSA proposals are very disappointing and, on this matter, the NAC has failed in its basic purpose of imparting a new vision to social policy in India.

The NAC began its deliberations on a visionary note but later came under a lot of pressure to accommodate constraints imposed by the government. The final result is a minimalist proposal that misses many important elements of food security.

The PDS framework is very fragmented and fails to abolish the artificial and divisive distinction between APL and BPL households. It takes on board food procurement limits that reflect the government’s reluctance to expand the PDS more than objective constraints.

The non-PDS entitlements, for their part, have been diluted beyond recognition. Entire fields of intervention that are crucial for food security (such as child development services and old age pensions) have been left out of the final proposals.

An opportunity has been missed to initiate a radical departure in this field. The NAC proposals are a great victory for the government – they allow it to appear to be doing something radical for food security, but it is actually “more of the same”.