Why the NFSA will not ensure nutrition security
The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) was introduced in Parliament in December 2011. Although the Bill begins with the lofty ideal “to provide for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach”, the current draft betrays a poor understanding of nutrition security and falls far short of effectively addressing the problems of hunger and malnutrition, which are widely prevalent across the country. Food security has three aspects to it – availability, access and absorption. This Bill only partially addresses the ‘access’ aspect of food security, while completely ignoring ‘availability’ and ‘absorption’. Hence, the Bill, if at all any, can be expected to have only a very limited impact on nutrition security.