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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Hunger pangs -Jaideep Hardikar

Hunger pangs -Jaideep Hardikar

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published Published on Sep 16, 2022   modified Modified on Sep 16, 2022

-The Telegraph

At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013

Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera, and later reinforced by the Supreme Court while passing orders on a suo motu petition regarding migrant labourers.

Highlighting an anomaly in the Centre’s estimates two years ago, Drèze and Khera had said that at least a 100 million needy people, entitled to the subsidised staples, are yet to obtain ration cards. Here’s why: while 800 million people were eligible for dry, subsidised rations in 2013, based on 2011 census data, that figure ought to have gone up today commensurate with our population growth. It hasn’t. At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013. Within that, the poorest of the poor, entitled to the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, number at 23.4 million, the remaining are priority households. The National Food Security Act entitled 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population to receive subsidised foodgrains under the targeted public distribution system. At the all-India level, applying the 67 per cent ratio to a projected population of 1,372 million for 2020, PDS coverage today would be 922 million instead of 800 million.

Besides that, the food ministry has, in eight years, annulled some 47 million ghost or duplicate ration cards (170 million people) across the states under the PDS, replacing them with ‘persons who deserve to get subsidised rations’ as part of what it calls the right targeting.

Recently, while disposing of a petition on the miseries of migrant labourers, the Supreme Court directed the Centre to rectify the error to bring more needy people into the NFSA net. It rightly reiterated that the right to food is a fundamental one. If these numbers were updated, it would enable the states to issue new ration cards over time. The Narendra Modi-led regime hasn’t fixed it yet.

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The Telegraph, 16 September, 2022, https://www.telegraphindia.com/opinion/hunger-pangs/cid/1886909


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