The findings are particularly relevant for assessing the achievements of India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) and the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013. They also provide an opportunity to rethink the design of the PDS so that it contributes more effectively to achieving Sustainable Development Goal 2 — Zero Hunger — and improves the nutritional outcomes of India’s large food-subsidy programme.
India was the first country in the world to enact a legal right to food through the NFSA in 2013. The Act entitled 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population, based on the 2011 Census, to receive 5 kg of food grains per person per month at highly subsidised prices of ₹3, ₹2 and ₹1 per kg for rice, wheat and millets, respectively. Antyodaya households were entitled to 35 kg of food grains per month. Since 2020, the scheme has been subsumed within the PM Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, under which all eligible beneficiaries receive their entitled quantity of food grains free of cost.
Today, nearly 800 million people receive about 55 million tonnes of food grains annually free of charge. Food subsidy amounted to ₹2.28 trillion in 2025-26 and has more than doubled since 2019-20, largely because of higher procurement prices and the rising economic cost of food grains handled by Food Corporation of India. Food subsidy now accounts for more than 4 per cent of the Union government’s budgetary expenditure, making it the single-largest welfare programme in terms of public spending. Given the substantial fiscal commitment, it is appropriate to assess whether the present coverage of nearly two-thirds of the population remains justified in the light of changing socioeconomic conditions.
Such an assessment should be based on objective evidence. The key questions are: Has the purchasing power of households improved? What proportion of the population still cannot afford a healthy diet? How much has poverty declined? What is the current extent of undernourishment? How have nutrition-related health outcomes changed? Most importantly, how can the PDS be redesigned to achieve better nutritional outcomes?
Between 2013-14 and 2025-26, India’s real per capita income (net national income at 2011-12 prices) increased by 78 per cent, from ₹68,572 to about ₹1.22 lakh. Although income growth has varied across population groups, the overall rise in purchasing power has been substantial. This is reflected in the sharp decline in poverty. At the time of the NFSA’s enactment, around 22 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line. Both official estimates and independent studies now suggest that poverty had declined to around 5 per cent by 2022-23.
These changes have significantly altered the profile of PDS beneficiaries. In the early years of the NFSA, roughly one-third of the beneficiaries were poor and two-thirds were above the poverty line. By 2025-26, only about 10 per cent of those receiving free food grains were estimated to be below the poverty line while the remaining 90 per cent were non-poor. This suggests that the primary rationale for the PDS has gradually shifted from poverty alleviation to addressing hunger and improving nutrition.
The latest UN report offers another important perspective. It estimates that the proportion of Indians unable to afford a healthy diet declined sharply from 59.8 per cent in 2017 to 35.5 per cent in 2025. In absolute terms, the number of such people fell from 759 million to 589 million. This indicates that about 170 million people crossed the affordability threshold for a healthy diet during this period as their purchasing power improved.
These estimates have important policy implications. If the objective of the PDS is to ensure that no one is deprived of a healthy diet because of inadequate income, the current level of coverage appears substantially larger than what is now required. As incomes continue to rise, the number of people unable to afford a healthy diet is also likely to decline further.
The report also provides estimates of undernourishment, defined as the proportion of the population whose dietary energy intake falls below the minimum requirement for a normal, active and healthy life. This is a more direct measure of hunger than poverty or food affordability. The prevalence of undernourishment in India declined from 13 per cent in 2013-14 to 9.8 per cent during 2023-25, indicating progress but at a relatively slow pace. This suggests that while economic growth has improved food affordability, eliminating hunger will require intervention beyond the provision of free cereals alone.
The PDS, therefore, needs to evolve from a food-security programme to a nutrition-security programme. Two reforms deserve urgent consideration. First, the coverage of beneficiaries should be progressively aligned with the population that cannot afford a healthy diet. Based on the latest estimates, this would imply reducing the number of beneficiaries to about 570 million in 2026, with further adjustment as purchasing power improves. Such rationalisation could reduce the food-subsidy bill by nearly 29 per cent.
Second, savings should be reinvested to improve nutrition outcomes. Part of the savings could be used to include nutrient-rich foods, such as pulses, in the food basket of 10 per cent population that continue to suffer from hunger. The remaining resources should be directed towards addressing persistent nutrition challenges, including anaemia among women and children and high levels of stunting, wasting and underweight among children. Such a reorientation would enable the PDS to move beyond ensuring calorie security towards achieving genuine nutrition security and accelerate India’s progress towards the sustainable development goal of Zero Hunger.
The author is distinguished professor, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations, and former member, NITI Aayog. The views are personal
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