Govt working in new flexi-PDS system

The government is considering providing every poor person an option to choose between direct cash transfer or taking ration from fair price shops in the revamped Public Distribution System under the proposed National Food Security law.

Updated on: Nov 4, 2011, 23:58:27 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is considering providing every poor person an option to choose between direct cash transfer or taking ration from fair price shops in the revamped Public Distribution System under the proposed National Food Security law.

The direct cash transfer will provide flexibility to a person to buy food grains from any of the listed shops. In case of ration quota, the person will have to take food grains from a designated fair price shop.

There are over 11.5 crore families listed as below poverty line even though the Central government recognizes only 6.5 crore of them.

The new formulation worked out by Nandan Nilekani, chairperson of Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, planning commission deputy chairperson would be enforced when the proposed national food security bill is implemented.

“The idea is to make PDS a flexible system,” said a senior plan panel official.

The revamped fair price shops will offer much more than just the subsidized food grains, which the government proposed to provide at highly subsidized rates. The model proposed for fair price shops says that they should sell any other food item like a neighbourhood grocery store to improve their financial viability.

Nilekani, in his report Information Technology support for PDS, had favoured this “flexi- approach” and said the fair price shops should provide mix of commodities and allow a person to take home his or her monthly quota in as many installments as possible in a month.

The government also wants that a poor person should be able to use unique identification (UID) or Aadhaar number enabled below poverty line card anywhere unlike the existing system where the BPL card can be used only in a designated fair price shop.

“The Aadhaar number could enable this,” the official said.

The new regime being proposed will also offer a wide range of PDS solutions for the state governments as it would accept physical coupons, smartcards, electronic coupons and even facilitate direct cash transfer.

In the new system, the government is looking at setting up dedicated call centers in each state for grievance redress and accessing your PDS account through a mobile. The PDS account will tell the beneficiary the amount of ration availed and the balance.

According to government officials, the new approach would be finalized at the meeting of Empowered Group of Ministers headed by finance minister Pranab Mukerjee, which is also examining the proposed food law.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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