October - December 2012 - National Institute of Rural Development

516 Mohammed Kasim C.consumers have little incentive to make useof PDS. With the sub-division of beneficiariesinto two namely, Above Poverty Line (APL)and Below Poverty Line (BPL), thegovernment changed the entitlement froma per capita norm to family norm since onlyBPL families are provided food at subsidisedprice. As a result, there has been considerablefall in the total foodgrains distributed throughPDS. The per capita availability through PDSalso registered a declining trend. As a result,during post-liberalisation the contribution ofPDS to total food supply in Kerala hasdeclined consistently. This has resulted inincreasing open market dependence of theState.Isacc and Ramkumar (2010) highlightedthe special efforts taken by the Keralagovernment to include all households inunorganised sector in BPL list. They criticallyexamined the Tendulkar Committee andSaxena Committee Reports. They argued thatthe use of poverty estimates provided byTendulkar Committee is likely to result inexclusion of many poor households from BPLlist. On the other hand, Saxena CommitteeReport would put many of the disadvantagedgroup on competition with generalpopulation for a place in BPL list. Further, sincethe maximum size of the BPL list is fixed inline with the estimates of poverty from NSSOsurveys, further expansion of criteria forautomatic inclusion is limited. However, toovercome these problems KeralaGovernment has adopted a Class approach,which automatically brings all households inthe unorganised sector into BPL list. With thisthe State expanded the welfare entitlementsto some more vulnerable households.However, the impact of these efforts on theofftake of food from PDS remainsunanswered.It is clear from the above discussion thatearlier studies concentrated mainly on theavailability pattern, including trends in internalproduction and contribution of PDS, itsfunctioning, impact of policy shift on thefunctioning of PDS and impact of access tosubsidised rice on consumption andnutritional status. Similarly, some of themmostly discussed the decline in fooddistribution through PDS because of policyshift and introduction of Targeted PublicDistribution System. But very recently therehas been a reverse trend, that is the foodgraindistribution through PDS started increasingmainly due to the special efforts made bythe State government to expand welfareentitlement to the vulnerable sections of thesociety like Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe,Fisherperson Households, labourers inunorganised sector etc. Further, they havehardly discussed the factors influencingeconomic access to food, a major componentof food security. Among the outcomemeasures of utilisation component, only thenutritional status of children is discussed,while the nutritional status of adults, whoconstitute working age people, is notadequately dealt with. Given the theoreticaldevelopment in case of food security, thepresent study works on the aforementionedlacuna by analysing three major componentsof food security, availability, economic accessand utilisation in Kerala.Food Security-ConceptsFood security is a situation whereeverybody has sufficient and affordable food.The most cited definition of food security isgiven by World Bank, which defines foodsecurity “as access by all people at all timesto sufficient food for an active and healthylife”. In other words, it can be considered asenough food to supply the energy neededto live healthy, active and productive life.Food and Agriculture Organisation defines itas “ensuring that all people at all times haveboth physical and economic access to basicfood they need”. Statz defined food securityas “ability to assure on a long-term basis, thatJournal of Rural Development, Vol. 31, No. 4, October - December : 2012