By Risabh Diwakar
Chhatram lives in a small village, under Sarguja District of Chhattisgarh. He is a fine example of BPL (below poverty line) and is entitled for various govt. schemes. He used to borrow money from money lenders of his village to remove his hunger. The loan repayment occurs next month and again his income will go into interest payment and he has to repeat this cycle. But, since few years things have changed for Chhatram. In August 2007, He was given a ?Red Card? by Chhattisgarh government under which he is entitled to get 35 Kg rice every month at Re 1 under PDS (Public Distribution System). Chhatram is not alone who has benefited from this scheme this scheme covers 90 per cent of the total BPL population in the state.
PDS was first started in urban India in the late 1960s to remove the critical food shortages. Later on between the years 1970s and 1980s, PDS was expanded to rural areas. Until 1992, PDS remained a general entitlement scheme for all citizens. With the growing poor population, it was converted into a targeted programme restricted to the BPL population by 1997. Over the time PDS has been severely criticized for widespread corruption and leakages. But situation changed in Chhattisgarh when Raman Singh took over as the CM. He took several steps to reform the PDS as a perfect working model.
Step 1
The problem was that the shops were run by businessmen who did not belong to the village and had a little incentive to keep the shop open all days. The local bodies had no control over them and businessmen were not accountable to the villagers.
Government took away the PDS shops from private businessmen and gave them to local communities like village Panchayat, women self-help group and co-operative society.
Step 2
Losses in running the PDS shop motivated the shop owners to cheat and resend the food grains to rice mills owners and who would again sell the same rice to state government at market price. The government went after the culprits and executed several raids and seized large quantities of paddy and rice.
Government raised commissions of PDS owners from Rs.8 per quintal to Rs.35 per quintal. Apart from this the state government decided to provide interest-free loans up to Rs.75000 to each PDS shop as seed capital to develop the shop and tide over immediate cash flow problems. This solution cost government Rs.80 crore per year.
Step 3
There were many bogus BPL cards. This resulted into the loss of subsidized food as it was distributed to the ineligible people. This also led to corruption as the subsidized food came into open market and was sold in market at market price.
Government issued fresh new BPL cards with new database which removed 3 lakhs bogus cards.
Step 4
Typically the rice was transported from government warehouse to PDS shops was diverted to the rice mill owners and who sold it back to the government at market rate as fresh rice. Thus single Kg of rice was sold over and over to the government costing government crores of rupees.
Government took over the transport system from private players and handed it to the public service corporation to ensure the better accountability. A web based application was implemented which track the trucks and amount of rice dispatched that were procured, transported, received or stored. An SMS is sent to who so ever is in loop at every delivery point.? The system make sure that rice reached to the PDS shops on 6th of every month and on 7th, designated as ?Chawal utsav? or ?Rice Festival? people could collect their monthly stock under the vigilance officers.
Way Forward
The last mile problem is not sorted out. There is no authenticity that collected ration reaches to the poor household. But still a large part of corruption is eroded and a trusted system is placed. Possibly when UID will come it will take care of the rest and schemes like direct cash transfer will strengthen the system.
Today Chhattisgarh is best performing state in term of PDS. Central government should learn a lesson for food security Bill.
Rishabh Diwakar:??He is an electronics engineer and is currently pursuing full time M.B.A in Energy and Infrastructure (Finance) from School of Petroleum Management, Gandhinagar. In past he has been associated with Tata Consultancy services Ltd for 3 years as a system engineer. He has also done research work for Indian Oil Corporation during his Internship and helped them to understand the role of media in branding.
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