Hike In Foodgrains Allocation To States Ruled Out

Ruling out any increase in the allocation of foodgrains to states, the Centre yesterday reiterated that the new norms for determining the quota for the targetted public distribution system (TPDS) were more realistic than those followed earlier.

Public distribution secretary A K Venkat Subramanian told newspersons yesterday that though the bulk of the grains allocated by the Centre to states would still go to the non-poor, the share of the people below the poverty line in the total food subsidy would go up under the TPDS.

This was because households falling in the poverty bracket would get 10 kg of grains every month at half the prices, while the non-poor would get at the increased prices.

 

Of the total annual allocation of 17.4 million tonnes of wheat and rice, about 7.4 million tonnes would be meant for the below poverty line (BPL) people and nearly 10 million tonnes for those above it. However, the subsidy would be shared by the BPL and non-poor in the ratio of 60:40.

Of the current years total anticipated food subsidy of about Rs 9,000 crore, roughly Rs 2,000 crore would go to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for the maintenance of the food buffer and meeting other costs. The remaining Rs 7,000 crore constitute the subsidy being passed on to the users of the public distribution system (PDS).

The people in the poverty bracket would get about Rs 4,200 crore while those out of it would get nearly Rs 2,800 crore.

Subramanian said the new allocation policy would ensure better grain availability in states having higher incidence of poverty.

While earlier nearly 50 per cent of the grains were going to the five states (Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal), the bulk of the supplies would now go to three states having the highest incidence of poverty Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

Reacting to the criticism of the new allocations by the states which would get a lower grain quota now, he said the earlier practice of making allocations on historic basis (taking previous allocations into account) had no relation with actual lifting of stocks by them. Also it did not take the poverty level into consideration. These lacunea were now being covered by basing the allocation on the incidence of poverty and average actual lifting in the past ten years. The previous allocations had created wide disparities in the PDS grain availability in different states, varying from 44.35 kg per household per month in Lakshadweep to a mere 2.81 kg in Bihar.

Similarly, while Goa had PDS availability of 22.39 kg per family per month, Mahdya Pradesh had only 3.19 kg.

Under the new policy, the three poverty stricken states of Bihar, U P and Madhya Pradesh stand to gain. However, they would have to improve their distribution network to actually utilise the higher allocation, he said.