Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Food security is necessary even in surplus food production years.
Reason (R) : Starvation

Question

Given below are two statements, one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A) : Food security is necessary even in surplus food production years.
Reason (R) : Starvation can still occur due to unequal distribution and lack of accessibility.
Select the correct answer from the code given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — D, both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A). The assertion is true because food security is defined in terms of people, not granaries. The 1996 World Food Summit definition, still the standard one, says food security exists 'when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life' — note 'all people', 'at all times' and 'physical and economic access'. A record national harvest satisfies only one of the four recognised pillars, availability; the other three are access, utilisation and stability. The reason is true as well, and it is precisely the mechanism that makes the assertion true: if grain sits in central warehouses while a landless labourer's wages have collapsed, or if a remote village is cut off from a fair price shop, that household starves in a surplus year. Because (R) supplies exactly the causal link that makes (A) hold, the answer is (d) and not (a).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) This is the near-miss the question is built around. Both statements are indeed true, but they are not independent observations: unequal distribution and lack of access are the only reason a surplus year can still leave people hungry. Remove (R) and the assertion has no basis at all, which is the textbook test for 'correct explanation'.  (b) (R) is not false. It is the central finding of the modern economics of hunger: Amartya Sen's Poverty and Famines (1981) showed that famine can strike without any collapse in the aggregate availability of food, because particular occupational groups lose their exchange entitlements — the ability to command food with their labour, produce or wages.  (c) (A) is not false. India's own experience is the standing proof: the country has been a net foodgrain surplus producer for decades and still enacted the National Food Security Act in 2013 to guarantee subsidised grain to up to 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population. A state does not build a public distribution system, buffer stocks and a food-security law if surplus production by itself ended hunger.

Concept: Food security is a household-level and individual-level idea, not a national-accounts one. Its four classic pillars are availability (enough food in the system), access (households can physically reach it and afford it), utilisation (the body can actually absorb it — clean water, sanitation, dietary quality) and stability (all three hold over time, through droughts, price shocks and lean seasons); recent FAO framing adds agency and sustainability as a fifth and sixth. National surplus speaks only to availability. Everything that decides whether a poor household eats — wages, prices, transport, ration entitlements, the functioning of the fair price shop — sits under access.

State PCS 2025 Q53 — Economy PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2025 Q53 — Economy PYQ with Answer