The National Food Security Act (NFSA) that came into effect1 on July 5, 2013 aims to ensure “food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach, by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people to live a life with dignity” (GOI 2013). The Act provides a legal entitlement (or the ‘right to food’) of subsidised foodgrain to 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population of India. NFSA relies on four existing programmes to provide food and nutritional security: the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS), the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the Mid Day Meal (MDM) programme and the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana (IGMSY).