Hunger, Food Security and PDS in India

Hunger, Food Security and PDS in India*

 Prof. (Dr.) M.K.Ghadoliya*

Abstract

Poverty and hunger are the two dimensions of a single problem. A considerable number of people in India go hungry as simply they cannot afford to purchase food at very high prices. In a democratic country like India, it is the moral duty of the government to provide food security to all as this is one of the MDGs to be achieved by all the governments by 2015. Although the production and productivity has increased during past few decades but the possibility of further improvement in the production and productivity seems to be limited. The land resources are limited and water availability is declining day by day. To ensure the economic access of the poor the government of India has come up with a very ambitious plan of providing food at subsidised rates to almost all the population. The Food Security Act will boost the requirement for PDS and the government will have to make provisions for huge amount of subsidy. It is therefore necessary to limit the subsidy by targeting the beneficiaries into three categories on the basis of the ownership of assets as:

 (a )asset rich-income poor

(b) asset poor-income poor

 (c) asset less-income poor.

The first target should be the third category of beneficiaries. This group is most vulnerable and also most careless. They simply does not care for themselves and also misuse the benefits by reckless spending. It is the duty of the government to stop the misuse of the subsidy by giving the responsibility to the Panchayati Raj institutions. Another suggestion may be that such beneficiaries should be provided with the  benefits in group through a scheme like mid-day meal so that any one person may not spoil the scheme.  The intervention of the government should make the fate of the poor better or else it should quit quitely. The market is efficient and it will take care of poor in much more efficient way than the government.

* A paper presented at International Conference on Right to food -National and International Dimention, organised by Seedling School of Law and Governance, JNU Jaipur from 27th 28th April, 2013