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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The inadequate food safety net -CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

The inadequate food safety net -CP Chandrasekhar and Jayati Ghosh

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published Published on Jun 1, 2021   modified Modified on Jun 1, 2021

-The Hindu Business Line/ NetworkIdeas.org

With India experiencing a severe second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, forcing decentralized lockdowns, a crisis of loss of jobs and livelihoods and resulting hunger is being reported from across the country. A reluctant central government has, therefore, been forced to revive the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), to distribute 5 kilograms of free foodgrain per person per month to the approximately 80 crore beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The reluctance shows in the decision to introduce the scheme only for a two-month period (May-June 2021) and to ignore demands for a significant hike in the free quota or to address exclusion of large numbers who need the support. As of now, there is no reason to believe that the second wave of the pandemic will fully abate, and normalcy will be restored, by July 2021. But the government has obviously decided to keep its commitment to free food provision to the minimum.

In its own reading, the PMGKAY has been the leading component of the government’s safety net over this period. In 2020-21, the scheme was announced initially for three months (PMGKAY-I April-June 2020) and then extended for a further five months (PMGKAY-II July-November 2020), though the effects of the economic devastation wrought by the pandemic and the lockdown lasted much longer. According to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, a total of 305 lakh tonnes of foodgrains (104 lakh tonnes of wheat and 201 lakh tonnes of rice) were allocated for this purpose in 2020-21.

Besides the fact that there are many eligible persons who are excluded from coverage under the NFSA and some like migrant workers could not access its benefits, survey evidence suggests that the free food provided under the PMGKAY did not adequately address the hunger that resulted from the devastating impact of the unemployment and loss of livelihoods that resulted from the harsh lockdown imposed during the first wave of the pandemic. Many experts had suggested that, besides the special allocation under PMGKAY, the government should rovide the regular entitlement of subsidized food provided under the NFSA to those covered (35 kg per family per month for severely poor Antyodaya Anna Yojana beneficiaries and 5 kg per person per month for the rest) free of cost, and widen coverage through universal provision. Those recommendations were not accepted.

The free foodgrains scheme was not limited in scope by shortage of physical stocks. With India having been the beneficiary of two good monsoons in succession, with a third predicted, agricultural output is at record levels. Rice output rose from 109.7 million tonnes in 2016-17 to 112.8 million tonnes in 2017-18, 116.42 million tonnes in 2018-19, 118.9 million tonnes in 2019-20 and an estimated at 121.5 million tonnes in 2020-21. The corresponding figures for wheat are 98.5, 98.9, 102.2, 107.9 and 108.8 million tonnes respectively.

The result of this production surge was higher procurement and larger stocks with the government. As Chart 1 shows, total foodgrain production rose from 285 million tonnes in 2017-18 and 2018-19 to 297.5 million tonnes in 2019-20 and 305.4 million tonnes in 2020-21. Procurement of rice and wheat rose from 69 million tonnes in 2017-18 to 93 million tonnes till end-May in marketing season 2020-21, when there were still a few months of the rice marketing season left to complete. Not only was production rising, but the share of production procured recorded an increase.

Please click here to read more.

Kindly click here to access the Hunger Watch Report (released in May 2021) by Right to Food Campaign and Centre for Equity Studies.


The Hindu Business Line/ NetworkIdeas.org , 1 June, 2021, https://www.networkideas.org/featured-articles/2021/06/the-inadequate-food-safety-net/?fbclid=IwAR2VvGkFYsxr53R5I-o06HPomahdqkmkcJ4a2vOZ3balRmpDBo0vFoKn1dc


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