What is government planning to do with the Public Distribution System (PDS)? The answer lies in an old adage: Give a dog bad name and hang him! The common impression is that the PDS is not working because of pilferage and hence it is taken as a foregone conclusion that it needs to be replaced with cash transfer. Two empirical studies conducted recently, one of them by noted economists Jean Dreze...

Long promised by the UPA government, the food security bill will be tabled in parliament in December this year. However, the National Advisory Council (NAC), which drafted the proposal, is tussling with the government over the “dilution and misdirection” of the Bill. The final Bill diverges from the original NAC draft on key issues: adoption of alternatives to the PDS such as cash transfers, the risk of inflation due to...

In the rural and ‘backward' districts of Orissa, where starvation is still a real threat, the people prefer PDS to the proposed cash transfers… The Public Distribution System (PDS) is a great idea. If you go into the countryside and talk to people, you can understand the real value of the PDS. This is what I learnt by taking part in a recent survey of the PDS in Orissa, in June...

State links PDS to UID to plug leakages in food supplies but gaps remain Madhya Pradesh has opted for the technologically most sophisticated—and costliest—method for revamping its public distribution system (PDS). It is one of a handful of states that is trying to ensure that subsidised food reaches the segment it is meant for, the poorest of the population or those below the poverty line (BPL). But the route it has...

More than two years have passed and there seems to be no progress worth speaking about in making the promised law that will guarantee food for the people. The promise came from the UPA-2 as part of its election manifesto in 2009. It was a time of recovery from a time of economic troubles. The impact of the global economic slowdown came on top of the agrarian crisis and the...