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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | No easy route to food security

No easy route to food security

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published Published on Jul 19, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 19, 2010

The public distribution system (PDS) has failed to deliver on its objectives in many parts of the country. It would then seem appropriate to dismantle the system immediately and replace it with food coupons or cash transfers to the eligible households. But evidence on ground illustrate that PDS has functioned well for years in southern states such as Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, with majority of the households purchasing food grain from the PDS.

More recently, Chhattisgarh has demonstrated that the system can be made to deliver with appropriate overhaul of the processes and use of information technology. So much so that Maharashtra is reportedly planning to replicate the Chhattisgarh experiment. In contrast, in northern states such as Uttar Pradesh, very few rural households access the PDS. Clearly, these examples and particularly the Chhattisgarh experiment show that good governance in a state will go a long way. Replacing the PDS with food coupons in states with poor governance is unlikely to bring a great change.

Food coupon or cash transfer by themselves will neither ensure that the poor get access to food nor bring down the government’s food subsidy bill. For instance, what good is a food coupon if grains are not available readily? Therefore, comprehensive policy changes are needed to improve the food economy at every stage — from procurement, storage, stocking and cross-border movement — to bring down the cost of supplying subsidised food through PDS or in the open market. Also, diversion of supplies meant for PDS to the black market need to be checked.

In the long term, direct cash transfers to beneficiaries would be a more cost-effective solution than continuing with the PDS to deliver subsidies. But the trouble is universal cash transfers plan can be implemented only after unique IDs are allotted. Therefore, in the medium term, the process of supplying grains through PDS needs to be streamlined. Application of IT solutions for inventory management would partly help achieve this objective. So would use of biometric cards help weed out fake ration cardholders and ineligible households.


The Economic Times, 19 July, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/opinion/editorial/No-easy-route-to-food-security/articleshow/6185513.cms


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