When noted economist Jean Dreze visited Surguja in Chhattisgarh a decade ago, its utterly non-functional Public Distribution System (PDS) looked like especially “designed to fail.” The National Advisory Committee member has written in a recent article that the ration shop owners illegally sold the grain meant for the poor and “hunger haunted the land.” But that was then. The economist was pleasantly shocked to see the transformation this time. “Ten years...

Sitting on his father’s shoulders, two-year-old Rahul Kumar giggles and tugs on a lock of his father’s hair. A happy, healthy-looking boy, Rahul has already seen much of India. Born in a small village in northern Bihar, he has spent roughly half of his short life in Punjab, where his parents work as seasonal farm labourers. He has spent a few months in his parents’ village. The rest has been spent...

Bolangir district in Orissa, facing drought conditions since 1965, sees an annual mass migration of farmers to other States in search of work. SURESH GOHIR of Bhotapada village in the backward Bolangir district of Orissa consumed pesticide two years ago after his paddy crop failed. He survived the suicide attempt but found life doubly difficult as debt had mounted. Suresh was forced to migrate to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh in search of...

The Centre plans to open over 1,000 residential schools for girls in backward and remote areas as part of its plan to universalise education. The National Sample Survey has found out that over 81 lakh children aged 6 to 13 years remain out of school and that most of them are girls. The human resource development ministry has told the finance ministry it wants to set up 1,073 new Kasturba Gandhi Balika...

The NREGS is restricted. The PDS is targeted. Only exploitation is universal. The rotting of lakhs of tonnes of foodgrain in open yards, while shocking, is hardly new or surprising. Remember the rural poor marching on godowns in Andhra Pradesh in 2001 in similar circumstances? The Supreme Court was quite right in jolting the Union government. “In a country where admittedly people are starving, it is a crime to waste even...