The outbreak of the SARS CoV2 virus, commonly referred to as the COVID‐19 pandemic, has impacted the social, economic, political, and cultural lives of citizens around the world. The sudden outbreak of the pandemic has exposed the legal preparedness, or lack thereof, of governments to reduce and contain its drastic impact. Strong legislative measures play a crucial role in any epidemic or pandemic situation. In this situation, the Indian Government has requested all state governments to invoke the Epidemic Disease Act (EDA) of 1897 to address the COVID‐19 emergency. The Central Government has also used the powers provided in the Disaster Management Act (DMA) of 2005. As the country is facing its first major health emergency since independence, the existing legislative measures to deal with a COVID‐19 like situation are lacking and require certain amendments to address such situations in the future. This paper aims to present the current constitutional and legislative response to health emergencies in India and attempts to identify gray areas in the statutory provisions. Based on the analysis, this paper suggests several recommendations for amending current legislation and suggests the promulgation of comprehensive public health law. This paper is largely based on primary sources such as the EDA and the DMA, regulations, guidelines, rules issued by the public authorities and court cases related to health and health emergencies along with secondary resources such as newspaper articles and published papers.

The second goal of the United Nations Development Programme's Sustainable Development Goals emphasizes food security, which is no hunger by 2030. India has a significant role to play in achieving this goal, as nearly 200 million of its inhabitants live in hunger. This accounts for almost a quarter of global hunger. The public distribution system (PDS) is the policy initiative by the Government of India to provide food security to needy citizens. The scheme is considered one of the world's largest food security programs. The 2013 National Food Security Act covers 75% and 50% of the rural and urban population, respectively, and provides 35 kg of grain for each needy family. Despite these efforts, India still faces food insecurity. There are certain exclusion and inclusion errors in the implementation of the PDS. Each state (federal unit) in India has followed its implementation strategy by leveraging Information and Communication Technologies with differing levels of success. Many studies found that Chhattisgarh, a state in the Hindi belt of the country, is implementing the scheme effectively through centralized online real‐time electronic PDS (CORE‐PDS). The present article uses network governance as a theoretical framework to understand the success story of Chhattisgarh's CORE‐PDS and to identify its key success factors by analyzing the role of state and nonstate actors in the implementation of the PDS. The network governance approach is emerging as a crucial theoretical framework in the governance and public policy fields for identifying the challenges and problems in the policy domain and building networks among state actors, markets, civil society, and citizens.

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