Casting the Net: India's Public Distribution System after the Food Security Act

Unlike the NFSA, the CFSA does not pre-specify a minimum coverage for the PDS-the coverage derives from the eligibility criteria. Because the eligibility criteria are fairly broad, the coverage is close to universal in rural areas. Thisrefers to what entitled households are able to purchase from the...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Economic and political weekly 2019-02
Main Authors: Dreze, Jean, Gupta, Prankur, Khera, Reetika, Pimenta, Isabel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
College faculty
Cooperation
Costs
Dreze, Jean
Economics
Economists
Food security
Food supply
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
Households
International cooperation
Internet
Maternity benefits
Politics
Rural areas
Starvation
Subsidies
Technical institutes
Urban areas
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Summary:Unlike the NFSA, the CFSA does not pre-specify a minimum coverage for the PDS-the coverage derives from the eligibility criteria. Because the eligibility criteria are fairly broad, the coverage is close to universal in rural areas. Thisrefers to what entitled households are able to purchase from the PDS as a proportion of their entitlements.17 For instance, if a household that is entitled to 30 kg of foodgrain per month actually gets, say, 27 kg per month, then the PER would be 90%. Since PDS foodgrain allocations at different levels (such as district, block, and village) are typically based on aggregate entitlements at the relevant level, the PER can be read as an indicator of the cumulative leakages in the system. [...]private dealers are begging to be removed, in favour of public institutions.42 States like Chhattisgarh and Odisha (and others before them, notably Tamil Nadu) have shown the way-it is largely a matter of political will. According to food department officials in Chhattisgarh, this is a common practice-April's rations are often distributed in March to ease the storage constraints that crop up in April. 20 See Dreze and Khera (2010b), Aggarwal (2011), Puri (2012), Garg (2013), Chatterjee (2014), Dreze and Khera with the PEEP Team (2014), among others. 21 See Haldar and Basu (2018), based on a survey of 424 randomly selected households spread over four blocks of Bankura.
ISSN:0012-9976