-The Hindu New Delhi: Just how leaky is the Public Distribution System and is it getting worse or better? The question is at the centre of a dispute between economists over recent estimates of diversion in the PDS used in an official report. The Shanta Kumar high-level committee on the restructuring of the Food Corporation of India submitted its report to Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week, recommending a gradual move...

-The Financial Express Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Odisha have reported sharp falls in grain leakages through public distribution system (PDS) during the period between 2004-05 and 2011-12, according to an assessment by development economists Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera. In Chhattisgarh, which took several measures such as digitisation of beneficiaries lists, fair-price shops and GPS tracking of foodgrain carrying trucks, the estimated grain leakage has reduced to only 9.3% in 2011-12 from 51.8%...

-Economic and Political Weekly   A "high-level" committee makes half-baked recommendations which will rollback the PDS. A ccording to media reports, former Union Minister for Food Shanta Kumar recently disowned the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on behalf of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). He explained, without blinking, that the BJP had just pretended to support the Act when it was being discussed in Parliament, for fear of the possible electoral consequences of...

-Scroll.in The strongest safeguard against fraud is not end-to-end computerisation but clarity of entitlements: if people know what is due to them, they will fight for it. In a stunning admission of party hypocrisy, former Food Minister Shanta Kumar recently stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party's support for the National Food Security Act last year was just a pretence. Remember, when the act was being discussed in Parliament, BJP leaders (from Narendra...

-The Hindu The Shanta Kumar Committee's recommendations to unbundle the Food Corporation of India are in tune with U.S.-led demands raised in the World Trade Organization The Shanta Kumar Committee report, released last week, on a range of issues relating to procurement, storage and distribution of food grains is not only deeply flawed in its reading of the situation on food security, but also short on facts. It was prepared under the...