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...

The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI)’s ambitious plan of issuing a unique biometric-enabled number, innocuously called ‘Aadhaar’, to every Indian resident has finally begun to generate a debate on citizen-State relations, privacy, financial implications, and operational practicalities. What the debate has largely missed so far, however, is the credibility of the UIDAI’s claims in the field of social policy, particularly the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and Public Distribution...

The 1,600 families in Haryana’s Panchkula district which line up at fair price shops for foodgrains and kerosene can do away with their prized ration cards, pieces of paper that entitle the poor to subsidized food and fuel. Beginning Tuesday, while they still have to queue up, these families will receive their rations after a biometric identification using smart cards. That’s a small beginning for an ambitious Rs138 crore Centrally funded project...

Ultimately, the answer lies in increasing farm production and productivity The Chairman of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, C. Rangarajan, on Tuesday suggested that people Above the Poverty Line (APL) could be considered for the mandatory food security scheme by limiting the subsidised foodgrains entitlement of Below the Poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries to 30 kg per month per family (instead of 35 kg). “An alternative is to give the...

Bowing to pressure from the political leadership of the Congress, the government will consider making food security universal, but at a higher price for the rich. Food security was an electoral promise of the Congress before the 2009 polls, but the initial draft of the Bill said that it would apply only to the poor. After Congress president Sonia Gandhi refused to accept the Bill in that form, an empowered group...