A promise to provide almost one in three people living in India with very cheap food is the ruling-Congress party’s electoral trump card amid allegations of corruption and misgovernance on its watch. In a country where 40% of children are underweight and depending on which figures you go by, between a fifth and a third of people live below the poverty line, the food security act seems like a probable vote getter. In short, food security is the Congress’s election insurance policy.
For many of the poorest voters, the promise of cheap food has remained just that. Some say failure by Congress to deliver on this headline policy was another nail in the coffin for the party, which has ruled India for almost a decade but has recently been beset by allegations of corruption, an inability to control inflation, and stalling economic growth.
Several residents in the Kalkaji slum complained they were unable to avail themselves of the food welfare program because they didn’t have the ration cards needed to procure food from the government’s so-called fair price shops where the subsidized food is distributed. For most of its history, India has had a system of food subsidies but the food security law extended the number of people eligible for the benefit and made it a legal right for them to receive it.