Explanation :
Context: Recently, the NITI Aayog has proposed to revise the National Food Security Act 2013.
The National Food Security Act (NFSA) was introduced by the Government of India in 2013.
Objective
- 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.
Salient Features
- It 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.
Responsibilities under NFSA
- NFSA defines the joint responsibility of the Centre and State/UT Government.
- The Centre is responsible for allocation of required foodgrains to States/UTs, transportation of foodgrains up to designated depots in each State/UT and providing central assistance to States/UTs for delivery of foodgrains from designated FCI godowns to the doorstep of the FPSs.
- The States/UTs are responsible for effective implementation of the Act, which inter-alia includes identification of eligible households, issuing ration cards to them, distribution of foodgrain entitlements to eligible households through fair price shops (FPS), issuance of licenses to Fair Price Shop dealers and their monitoring, setting up effective grievance redressal mechanism and necessary strengthening of Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS).
Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)
- It provides for reforms in the TPDS including schemes such as Cash transfers for provisioning of food entitlements. In pursuance of enabling provisions under section 12 of NFSA for cash transfer, Govt. notified ‘Cash Transfer of Food Subsidy Rule, 2015’ in Aug 2015.
The DBT experiment aims to-
- reduce the need for huge physical movement of foodgrains
- provide greater autonomy to beneficiaries to choose their consumption basket
- enhance dietary diversity
- reduce leakages
- facilitate better targeting
- promote financial inclusion
