Does National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 Ensure Right to Food? A Ground Level Reality from Assam

Abstract

This article assesses the effectiveness of the implementation of the NFSA, 2013 in providing food security to the people in the North-Eastern State of Assam which is known for several appalling reasons like poverty, insurgency, natural calamities like flood and land slide, etc. Based on the primary data collected from 400 sample respondents, selected on the basis of random sampling from 16 villages selected from four out of seven Tehsils in the Lakhimpur District, the study finds that the said Act has not been successful as per objectives of the Act in providing food security due to the factors like existence of malpractice by the implementing agents, poor utilisation of allotted and released funds, pilferage through ghost cards, illegal marketing of PDS commodities, poor functioning of Gram Panchayats in improving the PDS. The paper suggests that there is a need of strict vigilance mechanism to check illegal allocation of food material and efficient surveillance system to stop pilferage from PDS by removing ghost cards, organisation of awareness programmes among the beneficiaries, making Village and Gram Panchayat Samabaya Samiti (GPSS) level public committees to be effective, etc., in order to see to that NFSA is utilised best to achieve its vision of food security in the country.