With the support of numerous maps, this unique volume retells the spatial history of the Indian public food system: initially based on compulsory sales and imports, later graduating to agricultural support prices. From a restricted number of only urban beneficiaries in the beginning, to its spread to rural areas; from an import-dependent State to a self-sufficient cereal producing State. A system that played its part in the success of the Green Revolution by guaranteeing outlets for farmers, which showed the way to an improvement in the calorie intake of the population, but seldom that of the nutritional situation and had significant pernicious effects in terms of its ecological consequences.