Targeting food insecurity of Indians on the move: Access to food security entitlements among internal migrants in Bangalore

This thesis is concerned with the food security of low-income, internal migrants in India. Based on a quantitative survey as well as qualitative fieldwork conducted in one of India’s biggest cities, Bangalore, it explores the relationship between internal migration and the access to food of migrant households at their destination of migration. The main research question raised in this thesis is: How does internal migration affect the access to food of migrant households in urban India? In 2013, access to food became a legal right in India. The National Food Security Act reinforced the pledge of the Government to provide food and nutritional security for its citizens. The Act converted into legal entitlements the provisions of some of the largest food security programs in the World; the Public Distribution System (PDS), the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), and the Mid Day Meal (MDM) scheme. Despite food security being high on the political agenda, the Indian state has failed to ensure that every Indian has enough food to eat. One of the most common debates around the short-comings of the food security programs concerns whether their entitlements should be targeted or universal in scope. This thesis contributes to this debate, and aims to provide one piece to the puzzle of paradoxes that surrounds the persistency of food insecurity in India. This thesis shows that internal migrants face exclusion from the targeted food security program at their migration destination, thus affecting their access to food through social support entitlements. It finds that there is a link between migrant status and exclusion from the targeted food security program, while the same is not the case for the universal programs. The thesis argues that the informality and mobility of internal migrants’ livelihoods conflict with the state practices employed in the targeted program, while the mode of delivery used in the universal programs provides better prospects for mediating informality and mobility. Furthermore, it argues that internal migrants’ own agency, their livelihoods, and other non-state influences also are important to consider if we are to understand the outcome of their food security entitlements in different contexts