Ensuring food security and eliminating mass malnutrition is perhaps India’s biggest and most serious development problem and challenge for policy makers. Food is the first among many basic human needs, and it is for this reason that “the human right to food is recognised in several instruments under international law (UN 1999).� Specifically, Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognises “the fundamental right to freedom from hunger and malnutrition (ibid.).� In the last decade, a strong movement emerged in India – led by left political parties, academics and non-governmental organizations --- for establishing a universal right to food. It was this pressure that culminated in the drafting of the National Food Security Bill 2011, which was eventually passed by Parliament in September this year, becoming the National Food Security Act, 2013. The Food Security Act is a first step in ensuring the universal right to food. While I have reservations about the Act, and specifically about targeting and the exclusion of a substantial section of the population from the right to food, I shall focus first on the pressing issue of implementation of the Act. In implementing the Food Security Act, there are some important lessons we can learn from the Brazilian experience.