from Right to Food, 07-07-2009

  As India starts legislating on food security, there is much it could learn from laws and practices abroad

The manifesto of the Congress party promised the enactment of a Right to Food Act, if the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was voted back to power.
A preliminary shape of such an Act has emerged in what was reported in the media as the very first letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The UPA government hopes to repeat through the passage of this Act what it had achieved during its last term through the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) - a vision for more inclusive governance.

At the heart of the idea of the right to food is a very simple premise. That no citizen of a country should go hungry, and that each citizen should at all times have physical access to, or the means to acquire, adequate nutritious food. It is time India delivered on this. Few countries in the world can claim to have achieved this fully, and, till recently, fewer still have legislated it. The reasons for this are not difficult to comprehend. Only a handful of developed countries have the resources and the social commitment to welfarism to make this happen.

Over the last few years, there has been a slew of legislation across the world which recognize the right to food as a fundamental right and provide state guarantees.

The article recognize that many lessons can be learned from experiences from other countries. These lessons are political commitment, convergence, legal recourse, involvement of civil society and flexibility and innovation.

The full article can be found at:
http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/02205358/How-to-tackle-India8217s-hu.html