Which of the following statement/s is/are correct regarding National Food Security Act - 2013 ?
(a) Women empowerment is a feature of the National Food Security Act - 2013.
(b) State Food Commission i

Question

Which of the following statement/s is/are correct regarding National Food Security Act - 2013 ?
(a) Women empowerment is a feature of the National Food Security Act - 2013.
(b) State Food Commission is monitoring, reviewing and implementing authority of this Act - 2013.

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — option (1), "Statement (a) is correct." Statement (a) is true, and it is true in more than one way. Women's empowerment is written into the National Food Security Act, 2013 as a design feature rather than as an incidental benefit. The clearest instance is the provision on ration cards: the Act directs that the eldest woman of the household, being eighteen years of age or above, shall be the head of the household for the purpose of issue of the ration card, with a male becoming the head only where no such woman is available. That single clause transfers control of the household's food entitlement to a woman by default. Alongside it, the Act's chapter on women and children creates an individual maternity entitlement — free meals during pregnancy and six months after childbirth, and a maternity benefit of not less than six thousand rupees — which is a cash entitlement running to the woman herself. Empowerment through the ration card and empowerment through the maternity benefit together make statement (a) unambiguously correct. Statement (b) is false, and it fails on one word out of three. The Act does provide for a State Food Commission, and the Commission is indeed a monitoring and reviewing body — the section constituting it says so in terms, requiring every State Government to notify a State Food Commission for the purpose of monitoring and review of the implementation of the Act. Its functions run along those lines: monitor and evaluate implementation, advise the State Government, inquire into violations of entitlements, hear appeals against orders of the District Grievance Redressal Officer, and prepare annual reports for the State Legislature. What it is not is an implementing authority. Implementation is the business of the State Government and its Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Protection machinery — the department, the collectorate, the taluka supply officers and the fair price shops. A watchdog that also executed the scheme it watches would be reviewing its own work, which is exactly the arrangement the Act avoids. Statement (b) therefore overstates the Commission's role and is incorrect. One statement standing and one falling, and it is the first that stands, so option (1) is the credited answer. Note also the shape of the option set. With two statements there are four possible verdicts, and all four are printed: (a) alone, (b) alone, neither, both. There is no structural shortcut on a question built this way — you cannot narrow the field by eliminating a combination, because every combination is offered. Both statements have to be judged on their merits, and the mark turns on noticing that a single verb has been smuggled into statement (b).

Why the other options are wrong — (b) Option (2) accepts the description of the State Food Commission as a monitoring, reviewing AND implementing authority, and simultaneously rejects the women's empowerment feature. Both moves are wrong. The Commission is constituted for monitoring and review, not for execution — implementation rests with the State Government's food and civil supplies administration. And the empowerment feature is on the face of the Act, in the direction that the eldest adult woman be treated as head of household for the ration card.  (c) Option (3) is a double negative that fails on its first limb. Statement (a) is plainly correct: the Act makes the eldest woman aged eighteen or above the head of the household for issue of the ration card, and grants pregnant women and lactating mothers a maternity benefit of not less than six thousand rupees. A candidate who marks 'both incorrect' has usually spotted the flaw in statement (b) and then assumed, on the strength of finding one error, that the question is a trap in which nothing is true.  (d) Option (4) is the natural error, because statement (b) is right about the Commission's existence and right about two of the three functions it names. The word that breaks it is 'implementing'. The State Food Commission monitors, reviews, advises, inquires into violations and hears appeals from the District Grievance Redressal Officer; it does not implement the Act. Compound descriptions of a statutory body are a favourite falsification device — the examiner adds one function the statute does not confer and leaves everything else accurate.

Concept: The National Food Security Act, 2013 converted food subsidy from a scheme into a legal entitlement. Its core is a right to receive foodgrain at subsidised prices from the Public Distribution System: priority households are entitled to five kilograms of foodgrain per person per month, while Antyodaya Anna Yojana households continue to receive thirty-five kilograms per household per month, at the highly subsidised issue prices the Act specifies for rice, wheat and coarse grains. Coverage extends to up to seventy-five per cent of the rural population and up to fifty per cent of the urban population, which works out to roughly two-thirds of the country. Beyond the grain entitlement, the Act creates nutritional entitlements for women and children: an age-appropriate free meal for children between six months and six years through the anganwadi system, a free mid-day meal for children up to class VIII, and free meals plus the maternity benefit for pregnant women and lactating mothers. It also builds in an accountability architecture — an internal grievance redressal mechanism, a District Grievance Redressal Officer, and a State Food Commission above them — together with transparency obligations such as public disclosure of records and social audits.

State PCS 2026 Q47 — Economy PYQ with Answer

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