Food Security

Chhattisgarh's public distribution system reforms have been lauded as a model for the National Food Security Act, and as one that other states can emulate. Previous research has shown that PDS rice consumption increased in Chhattisgarh following reforms by the Raman Singh government, which began in 2004. However, one-third of PDS rice consumption growth in Chhattisgarh took place before 2004. This finding suggests that the pre-2004 reforms to fair price shop ownership and state procurement by the Ajit Jogi government contributed to PDS consumption growth. Our findings suggest that sustained reforms, when coupled with political and social will, can improve PDS access, and that improvements may not be substantial or sustained in the absence of these factors.

The functioning of the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India has come under scrutiny because of rising burden of subsidy and storage cost and meagre coverage of the poor and the actual benefits received by them. It is argued in this paper that the existing system has become unwieldy and unsustainable and that the time has come to review it, especially in the context of panchayat raj institutions (PRI) and the role they are expected to play in regard to the rural poor. With the help of illustrative data from two drought-prone districts of Karnataka, an attempt is made in the paper to demonstrate the feasibility of a decentralised system operated by PRI based on the local staples consumed by the poor. The result seems encouraging enough to suggest that it would be worthwhile to have more substantive investigation as also pilot projects to test the workability of the decentralised system.

Towards Hunger Free India: Agenda and Imperatives edited by M D Asthana and Pedro Madrano;
Manohar Publishers, New Delhi, 2001; pp liii+592, Rs 895

Public distribution of foodgrains in India is a national policy, which exists in all states. In some states, however, the public distribution system (PDS) works much better than in other states. The undivided state of Bihar (now the new Bihar and Jharkhand) is one of the states in which the policy works poorly. It is important to understand why this is the case. Generally, policy changes and recommendations do not take the specificities of particular states into account. Yet, for the PDS performance to improve in Bihar and Jharkhand, it is absolutely necessary to understand why it works as it does, what the main bottlenecks are and where there are possibilities for improvement, if any. This paper makes such an attempt: it describes the PDS in Bihar and Jharkhand, not only in terms of how it fails and what it does not accomplish, but also in terms of what it is and what it does. It is shown that while many people do benefit from the present set-up, there are also people within almost all categories of stakeholders who are dissatisfied with the large-scale misappropriation of foodgrains. It is argued that there is scope for change, but change requires strategic political manoeuvring and initially a low-key approach in order not to awaken and antagonise strong vested interests.