cover story
Food All for
PDS must be ridded of its weeds to reach its most rightful recipient—the BPL population. Tech can help
I
By Prachi Shirur
t is a paradox of sorts that although India is one of the fastest growing economies, millions of its citizens reel under extreme poverty. According to Suresh Tendulkar Committee report, 37.2 percent of Indians qualify as poor. The recent National Sample Survey shows that about five percent of the total population in the country sleeps without having two square meals a day. Right to food is a basic human right and reduction of poverty and hunger is the foremost goal of the Eighth United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Government of India has drafted the National Food Security Bill that promises 25 kg of food grain per month at Rs 3 per kg to each family, Below Poverty Line (BPL).
Reaching out to BPL families Public Distribution Systems (PDS) is India’s largest social assistance program, which has the objective of maintaining stability of food grain prices by way of establishing minimum procurement
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prices and providing subsidised basic food grains, sugar and cooking fuel to the less privileged. It has its origin to the famines and the food shortages of the1960s. Till 1992, the PDS was universal in India, available to all consumers. In 1992, Government of India introduced Revamped PDS (RPDS) in limited areas, primarily drought prone, tribal, hilly and remote. It was later substituted by Targeted PDS (TPDS) in 1997. TPDS is specifically aimed at BPL families in all parts of the country, under which each poor family was entitled to 10 kg of food grain per month at a subsidised price.