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Journalism of Courage
As of today,the public distribution system entitles poor families to subsidised foodgrain. There are,of course,giant failings in the system. Some of those are administrative,others built into the design of the PDS. And there are conceptual flaws,too: one such being the long-standing approach that the monthly entitlement is framed in terms of a per household allowance. There are several problems with this approach,and the idea has been floating for some time that,as part of food security reform,the allowance be redefined to target poor individuals rather than poor households. The PMs panel on PDS reform has pushed the idea again,saying that it is a progressive step that will help poorer households which tend to be larger.
The mathematical calculations surrounding the decision arent trivial. There are various amounts of foodgrain per family that have been named as possible under a food security law from 25 kg to 35 kg. Shifting the entitlement from families to individuals would theoretically improve the targeting process,and make the sums easier to do.
But,for many of us outside the process,that isnt the only takeaway. We should look at this also as a long-overdue recognition of the primacy of the individual in social sector programmes,which have been subservient for too long to the power structures embedded in family,clan and village. The panel points out that this much-needed reform would also allow foodgrain entitlement to be tightly linked to the UID when it rolls out another reminder of the revolutionary possibilities embodied in the UID,and its ability to change the nature of the interaction between the individual and the state.
