Right to Food Study, 2015.

This publication provides an overview on the main issues debated during the development and passage of the India’s National Food Security Act (2013), which legally binds national and state governments to extend far-reaching social protection to the country’s population.

It raises many lively and pertinent debates that may be useful for policy-makers and advocates, especially in low-income countries but also emerging economies, who wish to strengthen the programmatic and legal frameworks for food and nutrition in their respective countries.

The Indian case is not presented either as a model to be emulated by other countries nor as a prescription, but rather as a reference and a fit case for a global discussion about state food provisioning as part of a larger framework of social protection.

The debates summarized are based on the author’s participation in many of the processes related to right to food in India over the last decade and more, in many different capacities, as the Special Commissioner to the Supreme Court in the PUCL Right to Food Case, as Member-Convenor of the Working Group of the Prime Minister’s National Advisory Council (NAC), which was charged with the drafting of the first version of the National Food Security Bill, and as a member of the Right to Food Campaign.