THE government seems to be considering a new system to replace the present system of Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) with food coupons or direct cash transfer. The ills that plague the present TPDS are well-known and well-documented. The two national surveys, one by Programme Evaluation Organisation of the Planning Commission and the other by ORG-Marg, both at the instance of the Union government, have identified the major problem areas...
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Poverty of numbers
The cynics have a hierarchy on facts — lies, damned lies and statistics! But, modern economies live on numbers and economists love numbers. So, one must be deferential towards statisticians and statistics. Even so, India’s poverty numbers and their repeated re-engineering test one’s patience. It is possible to imagine that there would be as many estimates of poverty in India as there are estimates of it. So, one should not...
More »A Bellyful Of Proposals by Bhavdeep Kang
THE FLAGSHIP scheme of UPA II, the proposed National Food Security Act (NFSA), has become a policymaker’s nightmare. If suggestions by the Finance Ministry (reportedly at the instance of Congress President Sonia Gandhi) and the state governments are incorporated, the yearly food grain requirement would be close to 80 million tonnes. But considering food grain procurement in an average year is 40 to 41 million tonnes — half the amount...
More »Lessons from BPL Censuses by VK Ramachandran, Y Usami and Biplab Sarkar
To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well. The pilot surveys for the next Census of BPL (below-poverty-line) households are due to begin. Discussions are now on to finalise the methodology for the survey, and as the BPL Census is a matter of the subsistence and survival of hundreds...
More »Blinkered vision by Vandana Prasad
If recent indicators are anything to go by – the failure to keep food prices down, the proposed national food security Act, the failure to ensure even minimum wages to construction workers at projects for the upcoming Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, to recount a few – it seems the country has given up even the pretence of caring about its children or their crippling, unbudging state of malnutrition. Leaders,...
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