Analyse the trade-off between per-capita and per-household entitlement models in targeted welfare delivery, with reference to the Antyodaya Anna Yojana.

Section 3 of the National Food Security Act, 2013 already runs both models side by side — 5 kg per person monthly for Priority Households, but a flat 35 kg per household for Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) families [1]. The draft National Food Security (Amendment) Bill, 2026, proposing 7 kg per person for AAY subject to a 35 kg household ceiling, makes this design choice a live policy question [2].

Decomposing the two models

• Per-household entitlement targets adequacy — a guaranteed floor sufficient to keep the poorest family fed, insensitive to size. Administratively simple: the ration card, not the headcount, is the unit.
• Per-capita entitlement targets proportionality — food need scales with mouths to feed, so allocation should too. It is the model already used for the ~81 crore NFSA population [3].

Merits of the per-capita shift

• Removes an internal inequity the Department of Food and Public Distribution itself flags: a large AAY family's per-head share can fall below the 5 kg a Priority Household member receives [2].
• Links entitlement to nutritional requirement rather than an administrative category.

Costs of abandoning the household floor

• Small AAY units — elderly couples, widows, persons with disabilities — face steep cuts; a two-member household drops from 35 kg to 14 kg [2].
• Ignores economies of scale in consumption: per-head need falls as households grow, so strict proportionality over-corrects.
• With average household size down to 4.4 and lowest in the demographically advanced southern States [4], a uniform per-capita rule reduces their allocations — a federal equity concern.
• The retained 35 kg cap means larger households gain nothing, so equity is achieved by levelling down.

The trade-off is therefore not equity versus adequacy but calibration between them. A tapering slab — a guaranteed minimum floor for small households above a per-head rate — would rationalise allocation without withdrawing food from the most vulnerable, honouring the Article 21 right to food that the Act operationalises.