Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
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Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
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Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
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 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
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deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

            } else {
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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$metaTitle = &#039;NEWS ALERTS | &amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;Ration,cash transfers,Public Distribution System,PDS,Corruption,Leakage,Right to Food,National Food Security Act,NFSA,Food Security Act,Food Security,bpl,Below Poverty Line (BPL)&#039;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>&#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">Any change in the <a href="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html" title="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br /><br />This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br /><br />The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br /><br />As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br /><br />As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br /><br />What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br /><br />This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br /><br />It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br /><br />On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br /><br /><strong><em>References:<br /></em></strong><br />India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf" title="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html" title="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf" title="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html" title="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html" title="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf" title="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html" title="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /></div>               </font>
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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$metaTitle = &#039;NEWS ALERTS | &amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;Ration,cash transfers,Public Distribution System,PDS,Corruption,Leakage,Right to Food,National Food Security Act,NFSA,Food Security Act,Food Security,bpl,Below Poverty Line (BPL)&#039;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>&#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">Any change in the <a href="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html" title="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br /><br />This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br /><br />The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br /><br />As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br /><br />As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br /><br />What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br /><br />This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br /><br />It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br /><br />On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br /><br /><strong><em>References:<br /></em></strong><br />India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf" title="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html" title="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf" title="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html" title="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html" title="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf" title="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html" title="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /></div>               </font>
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		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
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	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;&amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;,
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Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;
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$metaTitle = &#039;NEWS ALERTS | &amp;#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&amp;#039;&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;Ration,cash transfers,Public Distribution System,PDS,Corruption,Leakage,Right to Food,National Food Security Act,NFSA,Food Security Act,Food Security,bpl,Below Poverty Line (BPL)&#039;
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;Any change in the &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html&quot;&gt;Public Distribution System (PDS)&lt;/a&gt; needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India&#039;s population. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&amp;nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is worth noting that the &lt;em&gt;Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India&lt;/em&gt;, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person&#039;s food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;References:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;br /&gt;India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please &lt;a href=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot; title=&quot;https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp;amp; 45 (please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot; title=&quot;http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot; title=&quot;http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access) &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please &lt;a href=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot; title=&quot;http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to access)&amp;nbsp; &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
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                <strong>&#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;</strong></h1>
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                <br /><div align="justify">Any change in the <a href="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html" title="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br /><br />This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br /><br />The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br /><br />As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br /><br />As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br /><br />What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br /><br />This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br /><br />It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br /><br />On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br /><br /><strong><em>References:<br /></em></strong><br />India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf" title="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html" title="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf" title="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html" title="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html" title="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf" title="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html" title="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /></div>               </font>
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<div align="justify">
Any change in the <a href="../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br />
<br />
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br />
<br />
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br />
<br />
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br />
<br />
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br />
<br />
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br />
<br />
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br />
<br />
It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br />
<br />
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br />
<br />
<strong><em>References:<br />
</em></strong><br />
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
</div>',
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	'metaTitle' => 'NEWS ALERTS | &#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;',
	'metaKeywords' => 'Ration,cash transfers,Public Distribution System,PDS,Corruption,Leakage,Right to Food,National Food Security Act,NFSA,Food Security Act,Food Security,bpl,Below Poverty Line (BPL)',
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Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...',
	'disp' => '<br /><div align="justify">Any change in the <a href="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html" title="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br /><br />This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br /><br />The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br /><br />As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br /><br />As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br /><br />What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br /><br />This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br /><br />It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br /><br />On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br /><br /><strong><em>References:<br /></em></strong><br />India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf" title="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html" title="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf" title="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html" title="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html" title="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf" title="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html" title="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /></div>',
	'lang' => 'English',
	'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/',
	'site_title' => 'im4change',
	'adminprix' => 'admin'
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	'id' => (int) 27267,
	'title' => '&#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;',
	'subheading' => '',
	'description' => '<br />
<div align="justify">
Any change in the <a href="../hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br />
<br />
This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br />
<br />
The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br />
<br />
As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br />
<br />
As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br />
<br />
What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br />
<br />
This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br />
<br />
It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br />
<br />
On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br />
<br />
<strong><em>References:<br />
</em></strong><br />
India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br />
<br />
FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="../latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="../docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="../latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br />
<br />
Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
<br />
Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />
PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br />
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$articleid = (int) 27267
$metaTitle = 'NEWS ALERTS | &#039;Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians&#039;'
$metaKeywords = 'Ration,cash transfers,Public Distribution System,PDS,Corruption,Leakage,Right to Food,National Food Security Act,NFSA,Food Security Act,Food Security,bpl,Below Poverty Line (BPL)'
$metaDesc = '

Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. 

This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic...'
$disp = '<br /><div align="justify">Any change in the <a href="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html" title="https://im4change.in/hunger-hdi/pds-ration-food-security-42.html">Public Distribution System (PDS)</a> needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. <br /><br />This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below).<br /><br />The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers.<br /><br />As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. <br /><br />As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12.<br /><br />What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a&nbsp; rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.&nbsp; <br /><br />This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera.<br /><br />It is worth noting that the <em>Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India</em>, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization.<br /><br />On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. <br /><br /><strong><em>References:<br /></em></strong><br />India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please <a href="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf" title="http://ihds.umd.edu/IHDS_files/ResearchBrief01.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please <a href="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html" title="http://www.epw.in/insight/understanding-leakages-public-distribution-system.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/Report%20of%20the%20High%20Level%20Committee%20on%20Reorienting%20the%20Role%20and%20Restructuring%20of%20FCI_English_1.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please <a href="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf" title="http://icrier.org/pdf/Working_Paper_294.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NFSA%20percent202013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/siteadmin/tinymce/uploaded/NationalFoodSecurityOrdinance2013.pdf">click here</a> to access)<br /><br />FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/fci-reforms-prescription-to-cure-or-kill-roshan-kishore-4675181.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/water-for-the-leeward-india-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-24521.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/public-distribution-system-reforms-and-consumption-in-chhattisgarh-prasad-krishnamurthy-vikram-pathania-and-sharad-tandon-24265.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please <a href="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html" title="http://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/there-seems-to-be-at-least-40-leakage-in-our-targeted-pds-system-ajay-chhibber-114020200447_1.html">click here</a> to access) &nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/rural-poverty-and-the-public-distribution-system-jean-dreze-and-reetika-khera-23277.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf" title="https://im4change.in/docs/335reforming-the-pds-lessons-from-chhattisgarh.pdf">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please <a href="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html" title="https://im4change.in/latest-news-updates/pds-leakage-drops-to-10-15-govt-11988.html">click here</a> to access) <br /><br />Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 &amp; 45 (please <a href="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html" title="http://www.epw.in/special-articles/revival-public-distribution-system-evidence-and-explanations.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /><br />Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please <a href="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf" title="http://www.cdedse.org/pdf/work198.pdf">click here</a> to access) <br />&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br />PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please <a href="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html" title="http://web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/projects.html">click here</a> to access)&nbsp; <br /></div>'
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'Changes in PDS may affect food security of half of Indians'

Any change in the Public Distribution System (PDS) needs to be undertaken with extreme caution since it is likely to affect the food security of 50 percent of India's population. This has been stated by National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) in a recent research brief. The note from NCAER is based on India Human Development Survey (2011-12) data. In the IHDS, nearly 42,000 households from 33 states and UTs were covered. (Please see the link below). The above finding must be seen in the light of recent recommendations made by the High Level Committee (HLC) on reforms in the Food Corporation of India (FCI), which says that PDS should be gradually replaced with cash transfers. As depicted in the NCAER analysis, various improvements could be noticed pertaining to the PDS between 2004-05 and 2011-12. During the 7 years span, there has been a rise in the number of cardholders from Antyodaya and below poverty line (BPL) categories, and commensurate increase in households depending on PDS purchase of grain could be observed during this period for both these categories. This trend shows that PDS has expanded, and reliance of deprived sections of the population on it has increased. As per the research brief from NCAER, the proportion of Antyodaya cardholders in India has increased from 3% in 2004-05 to 6% in 2011-12. Similarly, the proportion of BPL cardholders has increased from 33% in 2004-05 to 35% in 2011-12. This is supported by the fact that the percentage share of households (who have Antyodaya cards) buying grain from PDS has grown from 72.3% in 2004-05 to 90.4% in 2011-12 while the same in case of households (who have BPL cards) has risen from 53.3% in 2004-05 to 89.2% in 2011-12. What is interesting is that although the proportion of above poverty line (APL) cardholders has declined from 50% in 2004-05 to 46% in 2011-12, there has been a  rise in the percentage share of households (who have APL cards) buying grain from PDS from 11.6% in 2004-05 to 29.1% in 2011-12.  This may partly indicate that PDS leakage is happening in the APL quota and not the BPL or Antyodaya quota. Ghost entries are made on behalf of APL cardholders to siphon off grains (purchased from FCI under APL quota by states) to the black market by corrupt dealers, as per a recent paper by economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera. It is worth noting that the Report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, formed under the chairmanship of Shanta Kumar, has recommended that the coverage under the National Food Security Act 2013 (NFSA) should be confined to just 40 percent of the overall population instead of 67 percent, as originally entitled. The HLC has suggested that each person's food entitlement (from BPL household) can be raised from 5kg to 7kg. It says that pricing for priority households must be linked to Minimum Support Price (MSP), say 50 percent of MSP, while the Antyodaya households can be given foodgrains at Rs. 3/2/1 per kg for the time being. The HLC report has further recommended that the government should defer implementation of NFSA in states that have not done end-to-end computerization. On the sole ground of leakage, the Shanta Kumar Committee has suggested to replace PDS with cash transfers without going into further details. It has overlooked the PDS reforms undertaken by states like Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. A group of economists have recently opposed the leakage figure of 47% in public distribution system (PDS) that has been endorsed by the HLC on FCI restructuring. References: India Human Development Survey Research Brief No. 1, 2015 (Please click here to access) Understanding Leakages in the Public Distribution System by Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Vol-L, No. 7, February 14, 2015 (Please click here to access)  Report of the High level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India, January 2015 (Please click here to access) Leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the way forward - Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini (2015), ICRIER (Please click here to access)  The National Food Security Act 2013 (Please click here to access) The National Food Security Ordinance 2013 (Please click here to access) FCI reforms: prescription to cure or kill? -Roshan Kishore, Livemint.com, 27 January, 2015 (please click here to access) Water For The Leeward India -Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Outlook, 24 March, 2014 (please click here to access) Public Distribution System Reforms and Consumption in Chhattisgarh -Prasad Krishnamurthy, Vikram Pathania, and Sharad Tandon, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLIX, No. 8, February 22, 2014 (please click here to access) Ajay Chhibber, Director General of the IEO, a former assistant secretary general of the UN Development Programme, interviewed by Sanjeeb Mukherjee, Business Standard, 3 February, 2014 (please click here to access)    Rural Poverty and the Public Distribution System-Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-XLVIII, No. 45-46, November 16, 2013 (Please click here to access)  Reforming the Public Distribution System: Lessons from Chhattisgarh by Raghav Puri, Economic and Political Weekly, February 4, 2012 (please click here to access)  PDS leakage drops to 10-15 percent: govt, The Indian Express, 12 December, 2011 (please click here to access) Revival of the Public Distribution System -Reetika Khera, Economic and Political Weekly, November 5, 2011, Vol xlvi, No. 44 & 45 (please click here to access)  Trends in diversion of PDS grain -Reetika Khera (2011), Working Paper No. 198, Centre for Development Economics, Department of Economics, Delhi School of Economics (Please click here to access)     PEEP survey 2013 and PDS Survey 2011 (Please click here to access)