Universalising PDS feasible, badly needed in India: Right to Food Campaign

Says at present only 57% population is covered under PDS, while 67% has legal entitlement to subsidised grains under NFSA

The Right to Food Campaign (RTFC) today said that at a time when India is passing through one of the world’s worst Covid-19 crisis, it needs a universal food security system more than ever.

The campaign said that at present only 57 per cent of the country’s population is covered under the PDS, whereas 67 percent has a legal entitlement to subsidized food grains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).

Ration card quotas were distributed across states based on population figures from the 2011 Census, and have not been revised to account for the increase in population by more than 140 million people over the last decade, it added.

It also said that as the COVID-19 pandemic has pushed millions of additional Indians into poverty (230 million, according to one estimate), the current level of deprivation in the country is likely to be much higher than these recent estimates, thus universalization is the only way to ensure that all food insecure households are covered under the PDS, given the large scale of exclusion errors in targeting.

Last week, in an interview to Business Standard, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Country Director in India, Bishow Parajuli said that universalization of PDS as being demanded by many civil society activists might not be feasible as everyone in India does not need social protection.

Parajuli said that universalization of PDS means that all the citizens of India have access to subsidized food grains and not everyone in India needs social protection and indeed, there is a targeting mechanism used by the Government to reach the most vulnerable.

“No where in the world where quite a large number of people are middle class with universalization of government support,” Parajuli said.  

He said by excluding the population who do not need these support, the government can use these funds for other development efforts.