Paper short abstract:

This article examines the quality and frequency of access amongst traditionally marginalised social groups in India and Ethiopia to the countries' main food-security programmes - the PDS and the PSNP - to ascertain whether the programmes may be reinforcing traditional societal power cleavages.

Paper long abstract:

Both India and Ethiopia have incorporated the right to food in their constitutions and have put in place comprehensive social-protection programmes aimed at guaranteeing their citizens food security. Whilst generally seen as successful in at least ameliorating food insecurity in the two countries, there have been indications that the programmes may be simultaneously reinforcing some existing societal power cleavages (e.g. Lavers, 2016; Petrikova, 2018). However, many such findings have been based on smaller-scale qualitative studies and hence are generalizable only to certain areas within the two countries.

This article adopts a different approach - it examines nationally representative India's Human Development Survey and Ethiopia's Living Standard Measurement Survey data using quantitative statistical approaches in order to ascertain whether the two countries' main food-security programmes' benefits accrue disproportionately to already more powerful social groups and thus re-inforce existing social divides. Specifically, the article focuses on people's frequency and quality of access to the Productive Safety Net Programme in Ethiopia and the Public Distribution System in India and assesses whether traditionally marginalised groups in the two countries (ethnic and religious minorities, female-headed households, lowest-income households, scheduled castes and tribes in India) have experienced proportionally lower (or possibly greater) access to the food-security services. The second part of the article uses secondary data about political and policy differences between the two countries as well as amongst different states within the countries to try to understand the reasons for the uncovered differences in the programmes' 'discrimination rates' between and within the two countries.