We have learned in class about the nourishment problems in India. We know about the high levels of wasting and stunting. The 2011 report on State of the World’s Children reports that in India 48 percent of children under 5 are undernourished, 20 percent are wasted and 48 percent are stunted (“State of the World’s Children 2011). These statistics are just a few of the indicators of hunger in India. What is the real cause behind hunger in India? More and more, researchers are arguing that it is not a production problem, but rather a distribution problem. The problem of distribution has a particularly harsh effect on the rural poor in India. I will look at the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India and how access to this program is determined.
Food production in India has had an history of peaks and valleys just like in many other countries. India was once the world’s largest net importer of grain but their Green Revolution that focused on agriculturally promising areas and investment in promising farmers turned them into a net exporter in a matter of the few years between 1966 and 1972 (Swaminathan). In fact in the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, the rate of grain production exceeded the rate of population growth. Reserves were high as were spirits, but recently India has seen a downturn in their production numbers, now just barely keeping pace. This is due in large part to liberalization policies that brought a dramatic decrease in public funds designated to investment in agriculture and rural development. It also brought economic hardship on farmers by closing bank branches in rural areas, increased exclusion from the formal financial system (Swaminathan). However, what is still the greatest problem facing India is distribution. Yes, production may soon become strained or fall behind population growth, but if India cannot even distribute the food it already has no amount of excess production will cure the hunger problem.
India has had a PDS since the 1940’s when distribution focused mainly on urban areas and was dependent on food imports. Once India became more self-sufficient in food production, the years of 1978 to 1991 saw a major expansion of this program. In recent times, the PDS has moved to a Targeted PDS (TPDS) another product of liberalization (Swaminathan). This new TPDS is being criticized for because it has “neither benefited the poor, or helped reduce budgetary food subsidies,” (Swaminathan). The main problems with the TPDS are cited as: exclusion of some of those who truly need food, less economic viability, no price stabilization and food not reaching the intended consumer (Swaminathan). The exclusion of “truly needy” people is an interesting aspect and one I will consider further.
The objective of the current TPDS system, in the most basic terms, is to identify the poor and provide them with food. Households must be identified as below poverty line (BPL) households in ordered to be considred for the program. Notice I said considered, because there is a subset of the TPDS, the poorest of the poor or the “antoyoday anna yojana” or AAY households, which are the only households to be guaranteed 35 kilograms of food grains per month through fair price shops (FPS) with presentation of ration cards. The BPL households will only have food distributed to them after these AAY households have been satisfied and often there is not enough to go around. These ration cards provide food at a subsidized price and AAY cardholders have an significantly higher subsidy than BPL households. However, hunger in India extends outside of just the poorest families, meaning many of India’s hungry are left out of the TPDS completely. Households considered above the poverty line (APL) are given ration cards that rather than giving them food only allows them to buy food at FPS at prices close to the market value (Asthana). Furthermore, there is the problem of corruption in India. In 2007 it was ranked 72nd in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index. This can certainly be seen in the PDS. PDS ration cards are stolen and sold on the open market to people not classified or wrongly classified as poor and therefore entitled to food allotment. Also, there are instances when FPS’s do not receive any food allotment for the month because the food has been diverted to another FPS, region, etc. These “leakages” are not compensated in the next month and leakages increased with the remoteness of the FPS. This is made worse by the fact that generally it was found that greater remoteness (distance from nearest town) correlated with less access to food in general (Asthana).
There were also interesting findings when looking at scheduled castes (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST). Asthana found that villages with more SC’s were less likely to receive their monthly allotment at the FPS. Villages with more ST’s were even less likely to receive allotment even when controlling remoteness as a variable (ST’s tend to live in the remotest locations as compared to other rural populations). Overall, the study by Asthana revealed that “access to subsidized food is limited by status in the caste hierarchy,” and scheduled tribes have even lower socio-economic indicators and access to food than scheduled castes (Asthana).
Food production is no small matter in India, but the distribution systems in even worse condition. The TPDS leaves out many of the legitimately hungry by targeting the poor, or even more specifically, the poorest of the poor. Furthermore, corruption and leakages in the chain of supply causes the remotest, most rural populations to face the largest gaps in allotment. Finally, members of the lowest caste and members of indigenous tribes face the largest discrepancies with the TPDS due to perhaps discrimination and corruption. A return to the old PDS that focused on providing access to food for all seems to be in order as the TPDS’s many flaws are brought to light in new studies. Whatever India decides to do, distribution as well as food production should be the focus, distribution even more so than production.
Sources:
The State of the World’s Children 2011, Unicef.
Swaminathan, M. “Population and Food Security” Handbook of Populaiton and Development in India.
Asthana, A. N. “What determine access to subsidised food by the rural poor? Evidence from India” IDPR, 31(3). 2009.
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