On the eve of a decision on the draft food security law by the Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council, the government unveiled a blueprint for a complete revamp of the public distribution system, or PDS. State food ministers on Tuesday approved time bound changes in the PDS to plug the weaknesses in the system to create the appropriate delivery mechanism for meeting legal commitments of the proposed law. The...

The National Advisory Council likely to approve on Wednesday the draft of the National Food Security Bill. The scheme will be rolled out in the 150 poorest districts first on the basis of a `notional universalisation.’ Rejecting the recommendation put forward by the EGoM, NAC, at its meeting held on July 1, settled for the distribution of 35 kg of grain, either wheat or rice, to every poor household, but...

The government will enact a legislation to ensure subsidised wheat and rice to the poor, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee said at a seminar titled Bringing Green Revolution to Eastern States. “We are committed to enacting a legislation on food security (called National Food Security Act). But to make it successful, we need to produce more, procure more and strengthen the delivery mechanism for making foodgrain accessible to the poor at affordable...

A demand to reintroduce a universal Public Distribution System (PDS) in the country appears every now and then. Its proponents argue that universal access is necessary for ensuring food security, for better control on prices and for eliminating (at least partially) the evils of exclusion errors in the targeted PDS. The question is: what are the operational implications of access for all citizens to subsidised foodgrain? They are currently allocated as...

The planned National Food Security Act represents a unique opportunity to achieve gains with respect to the public distribution system. However, the current draft is a non-starter. When I first visited Surguja district in Chhattisgarh nearly 10 years ago, it was one of those areas where the Public Distribution System (PDS) was virtually non-functional. I felt constrained to write, at that time, that “the whole system looks like it has been...