Q.What is meant by the 'Food for Work' programme?

'Food for Work' is one of the government's wage-employment approaches to fighting poverty, linking work on rural assets to payment in food grains or wages.

The 'Food for Work' programme is one of the government's specific poverty-alleviation (wage-employment) programmes, initiated in the 1970s. Under it:

1. Poor, unskilled people in rural areas are given wage employment on public works — laying roads, constructing buildings and creating other rural infrastructure.
2. In return they receive food grains and/or wages, which supplements their consumption and provides additional income, particularly in the lean agricultural season when other work is scarce.
3. It thus serves two purposes at once — creating durable rural assets and providing employment and food security to the poor.

It is an important example of the wage-employment route to poverty alleviation, later carried forward by programmes such as MGNREGA.