Food Security

Bihar's public distribution system used to be one of the worst in India, but the system has improved significantly from 2011 onwards. The National Food Security Act, backed early on by the political leadership, enabled the state to include the bulk of the rural population in this improved system. However, there is still a long way to go in ensuring that the system is reliable, transparent and corruption-free.

We are grateful to Anindita Adhikari, Ankita Aggarwal, Aashish Gupta, Chinmay Kumar, Kanika Sharma, Alokika Singh and Nikhil Srivastav for helping to plan and coordinate the field survey; to Azhar Hussain for valuable insights on the Socio Economic and Caste Census; and to Shrayana Bhattacharya, Hemanshu Kumar, Rohini Somanathan, Raghav Puri and Sohini Paul for sharing findings of their own recent surveys in rural Bihar. We are also grateful to the Department of Food and Public Distribution and the Department of Rural Development (Government of Bihar), particularly food minister Shyam Rajak, for numerous clarifications. The survey was funded by the Indian Institute of Technology (Delhi) and the Planning and Development Unit at the Department of Economics, Allahabad University