Public Distribution System (India)
The government committed itself to announce a minimum support price (MSP) to promote agriculture and the stocks procured were to be used towards meeting the needs of the PDS.
[7][8] In the subsequent decades, the coverage and reach of the PDS expanded considerably on the back of various state-led schemes and the increased need for foodgrains to implement various regional and poverty programmes.
It was decided that the coverage of BPL households would be based on the state-wise poverty head count ratios estimated from the 1993-94 NSS consumption expenditure survey.
Subsequently, the government conducted a BPL Census in 2002 which scored households on 13 different parameters covering assets, occupation, land ownership etc.
While the shift from universal to targeted PDS was meant to enhance coverage among the poor and reduce corruption, a large body of work[which?]
The message from these numbers was clear - the targeting process based on poverty lines and the BPL census led to severe exclusion and inclusion errors.
[21] The states worst affected by the reform were Kerala and Tamil Nadu which historically had high PDS coverage and purchases prior to 1997–98.
Various states relied on simple inclusion-exclusion criteria to identify eligible households, often using the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) or other recent data they had.
[32][15] While the NFSA came into effect in September 2013, its roll-out at the state-level happened with a significant lag as state governments struggled to prepare new beneficiary lists, computerize their ration cards, and stream-line various other processes of distribution.
The earliest states to implement the NFSA were Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Rajasthan between September and December 2013, while Kerala and Tamil Nadu did so only in November 2016 owing to centre-state negotiations over coverage.
Nonetheless, evidence from numerous small-scale surveys points to increase in coverage, decline in exclusion errors, reduction in leakages, and improved transportation of grains.
[33] A six-state survey covering 3,800 households across Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal found that the PDS was "near universal" in rural areas of these states, inclusion and exclusion errors were down, and majority of households in MP, Odisha and West Bengal received their full entitlements from PDS.
[38] This under-coverage is mainly because the central government froze the coverage targets based on the now-outdated 2011 census and has not updated them ever since despite sustained population growth in the last decade or so.
[39] Of these, most notably Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal have expanded coverage and provide NFSA equivalent entitlements or more to these added beneficiaries (the rest have expanded coverage but provide lesser entitlements against NFSA).
Among these, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal finance their expanded PDS entirely out of state funds while the others receive some financial assistance from the central government in the form of 'tide-over' grains.
[46] Another study found moderate increases in households nutrient intake and diet quality resulting from the universalization of the PDS in the 8 districts in the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput (KBK) region in Odisha.
Second, cash transfers render greater choice to the beneficiaries by allowing them to choose whether they want to spend the extra income on food or some other commodity.
In the union territories of Puducherry, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the government replaced PDS with cash transfers in September 2015.
Using a novel dataset collected from over 1200 households across 9 states in 2011, one study reports that on aggregate about two-thirds of beneficiaries preferred the PDS over cash transfers.
This means that in order to collect their monthly grain entitlements, ration card holders must now present their fingerprints to authenticate their identity.
The claim was that integrating Aadhaar would help in identifying ghosts, fakes, and duplicate beneficiaries in the PDS lists, enforce stricter identity verification, improve supply-chain management and reduce corruption in the system.
A large-scale survey conducted as part of a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in Jharkhand by researchers at J-PAL found that at most 3% of total ration cards in the state were fake or ghosts.
[63] [66] On the issue of quantity fraud (dealers taking cuts from households), two independent studies from the state of Jharkhand, including a RCT, found that per-se mandating ABBA in the PDS led to no effect on corruption.
[69] In fact, official data from the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) itself suggested that in early 2018 about 12% of authentication requests for government services failed.
a review discovered the following structural shortcomings and disturbances:[72] Several schemes have augmented the number of people aided by PDS.
Lack of clarity in the planning and structuring of social safety and security programs in India has resulted in the creation of numerous cards for the poor.
]: In aggregate, only about 42% of subsidised grains issued by the central pool reach the target group, according to a Planning Commission study released in March 2008.
[81] But the United Progressive Alliance, which came to power in 2004, decided on a common minimum programme (CMP) and on the agenda was food and nutrition security.
[84][85] In a 2014 judgment, Delhi High Court has ruled that fair price shops cannot be allotted to a below poverty line card holder.
[clarification needed] NDTV produced a show which documented how the Government of Chhattisgarh's food department managed to fix its broken system so that the diversion of grain came down from about 50% in 2004–05 to about 10% in 2009–10.
