Hungry Kya? – Part 1
47.5 percent of India’s children are malnourished. 21 percent of the entire population is calorie-deficient. The numbers might be a couple of years old, there might be some measurement error and so on. And yes, we can continue to keep quite about it but this elephant in the room can not be hidden away – no matter what the spin.
Such continuing deprivation within our country is something which should shame us all as fellow humans and fellow Indians. If you did not get schooling as a child, you might still learn later – though it is certainly difficult. But if you did not develop to your fullest potential mentally and physically as a child because of malnutrition, all the riches of the future that we Indians dream about might not be of much help.
But equally seriously, such deprivation in front of our eyes further undermines India’s future because it prove to be the Achilles’ Heel for liberalization’s advocates. It should obviously not be so because what does a BSNL privatization have to do with malnutrition? But if the discourse of liberalization has to travel from Nariman Point to the aam aadmi then we must have a concrete solution to this problem.
The reds just scream – universalize PDS, increase ration shops. And all it results in is more corruption. The solution that will work is, you guessed it, the opposite. Slowly but surely we must replace the PDS with food stamps (or vouchers). They have been used in the US for years, and with great success.
Food stamps can only be spent on food, but at any private shop. The shop then redeems those stamps for money from the government. Simple. Out goes corruption and in comes competition.
This will not solve our food problem all by itself, but this reform is a no-brainer (Although there are obviously critics who shall be addressed in future posts)
When upscaled, it can perceptibly improve the future of literally hundreds of millions of young Indians. And the UPA government – which is ostensibly for the aam aadmi – has failed to push it. It still has some time, but this idea will hardly go beyond the Planning Commission’s brain trust.
So much for the “reformist” Dr. Singh. It shows that being a technocrat is different from being a leader.
UPDATE: Part 2 here.
[...] A Hundred Small Steps.” His first post addresses the problem of malnourished children and how to tackle it India must “slowly but surely…replace the public distribution system (PDS) with food [...]
Congratulations on your maiden post on INI.
So what data do we have on the success of food stamps in the United States ?
[...] SWARAJ Individual rights : Development : Smart welfare « Hungry Kya? – Part 1 [...]
Yossarin,
Part of the effectiveness of the program can be seen from its “error rate”. Less than 5% of the payments were over-payments, and slightly over 1 percent were under-payments. There is hardly any fraud now because all food stamps were converted into smart cards/EBT – and the next post in this series is about that.
But more importantly because the program is means-tested by income and other stats often congressional intervention is not required and there are in-built speedy responses in the program. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, 500 million dollars were distributed to 1.2 million survivors without any new law.
In comparison, our PM right now is micromanaging flood relief in Bihar.
Links: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fsp/qc/pdfs/2007-rates.pdf
http://cclponline.org/ccs/documents/2006_8_20FoodStamps.pdf
Welcome,
Where do I find your comments RSS feed?
Thanks NRA, the comments RSS feed is just above where the comments start. for this post it is http://swaraj.nationalinterest.in/2008/08/28/hungry-kya-part-1/feed/
Congrats on your first post!
By the way, about the post
If PDS is replaced by Cash vouchers or food stamps, how do you think our netas and babus can make money out of it? The very reason they fight in elections and public exams respectively IS to make money out of their public office, esp our public money isn’t it?
This is too much to ask out of Indian netas and babus!
Very true. The government just doesn’t want to put the power and choice in the hands of the people.
The critic you linked to, has a problem with a destitute widow encashing the stamps and using it to marry off her daughters.
Funny that he insists that they get food, and only food. I’d be happy that she used her resources in a way that she saw fit, rather than being force-fed by the govt. Its her choice after all, she wouldn’t do it unless the wedding was of more importance than food at that time, would she?!
But of course the govt knows best. Better to die a fat spinster than be married, no?
ok, well, that link was the RSS feed to the comments for this post.
For those who want the RSS link to the comments on all the posts, add this to your reader:
http://swaraj.nationalinterest.in/comments/feed
[...] my last post, I wrote about the not-so-new idea of replacing a system of ration shops with a system of food [...]
[...] previous posts on addressing food security in India are here and here Comments [...]