-The Telegraph At present, India has 195 million households with ration cards (nearly 794 million people), lower than the beneficiaries we intended to target in 2013 Inordinate delays in carrying out the census exercise are depriving millions of Indians who rely on rations for their subsistence. The exclusion of the poorest from the public distribution system in the pre and post-pandemic years was first flagged by the economists, Jean Drèze and Reetika...

-PTI/ Business Standard The implementation of ONORC was initiated in August 2019 Assam has finally operationalised the ration card portability service and with this, the Centre's 'One Nation, One Ration Card' programme is implemented across the country, the food ministry said on Tuesday. Under the ONORC (One Nation, One Ration Card), beneficiaries covered under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) can get their quota of subsidised foodgrains from any electronic point of...

-TelanganaToday.com India’s food subsidy programmes have the capacity to respond to increased demand. Thoughtful adjustment would reap large-scale benefits. Covid-19 lockdowns aggravated food deprivation in India. The pandemic also revealed opportunities to expand the country’s food subsidy programmes. India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) offers subsidised foodgrains to eligible households. Public pressure during Covid-19 lockdowns led to a brief expansion in the number of beneficiaries in States such as Delhi. Though temporary, the expansion...

-PTI/ NDTV.com The working paper titled 'Pandemic, Poverty, and Inequality: Evidence from India' presents estimates of poverty and consumption inequality in India for each of the years 2004-5 through the pandemic year 2020-21. New Delhi: Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKAY), which provides free foodgrains to poor people, played a key role in keeping extreme poverty in India at the lowest level of 0.8 per cent during the pandemic-hit 2020, according to...

-Down to Earth All that was discussed in the House through the day   More than 150 million households have job cards under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in the country as of December 18, 2021, Niranjan Jyoti, minister of state in the rural development ministry, told the Rajya Sabha. Uttar Pradesh had a maximum number of households having job cards (21,125,892) and Goa had a minimum number of households...