Next steps on nutritional security: improved PDS and storage

The government has unveiled its next course of action— nutritional security for the poor.

Food minister Ramvilas Paswan has said that in the next two years the government’s focus would be on nutritional security of the country's two-thirds population registered with the public distribution system (PDS) under the food security law.

The food security law aims to provide legal entitlement of 5 kg subsidised food grain per person every month at Rs 1-3/kg to 23.3 crore registered members. The law was passed by Parliament in September 2013, during the previous UPA regime.

“The food law was implemented in 2013, but only 11 states had rolled it out. It was done in a hurry. In the last three years, we have strengthened and implemented it in all states,” Paswan said. Going forward, he said the government's focus would be on ensuring “nutritional security” of the poor people registered with PDS.

The ministry has chalked out plans for supplying fortified wheat and rice flour via PDS, and is discussing with stakeholders the possibility of supplying nutritious food in a cost-effective manner. In another area where the consumers affairs ministry has made a mark is Direct Selling. With the intention of facilitating ‘Ease of doing business’, guidelines for direct selling companies like Avon, IMC, Oriflame, QNet, Herbalife, Amway, Tupperware, RCM, Care India & K-Link have been issued.

The guidelines are now in the form of an advisory to states to bring in transparency, may soon be made compulsory. Trevor Kuna, CEO of Hong Kong based QNet, said in a statement that the biggest challenge the industry has faced in the last 10-15 years in India is a ‘Regulatory Vacuum’, which had led to a lot of confusion and baseless allegations.

Meanwhile, stating that PDS reforms are still underway, Paswan said efforts are being made to plug loopholes in the system. Point of sale (PoS) machines are being installed and ration cards have been linked with Aadhaar number, which has helped to eliminate 2.33 crore fake ration cards so far. PoS machines have been installed in 2.4 lakh PDS shops out of 5.45 lakh shops. Doorstep delivery of food grains to PDS outlets are being done in some places. On a pilot basis, cash is being transferred directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries in Chandigarh, Puducherry and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, he said, adding that such efforts would be scaled up going forward depending on the states' preparedness.

However, sometimes solving one problem leads to another set of problems. For instance, one of the biggest achievements of the government has been the creation of a buffer stock of 20 lakh tonnes of pulses. Now, it is grappling with the problem of distributing them.

Paswan said that a road map for the creation of 100 lakh tonnes of storage capacity in the form of Steel Silos by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) and other agencies on PPP model for wheat and rice has been approved. Construction has been planned in three phases up to 2019-20.