Taken together, the new food-security and land-acquisition laws underscore the Indian government’s gradual but firm move toward making the world’s largest democracy a society in which citizens’ welfare is based on rights and entitlements rather than ephemeral charity. Detractors on the right insist that the new laws will break the budget and undermine economic growth, while opponents on the left argue that they do not go far enough in covering all of India’s poor and vulnerable.