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Shri Sharad Pawar, Minister of Consumers Affairs, Food & Public Distribution said here today that identification of beneficiaries, viability of fair price shops and effective monitoring at all levels are central to the successful implementation to the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS). Inaugurating the day long Conference of State Food Ministers on strengthening TPDS, Shri Pawar stressed that the need for identifying beneficiaries properly and correctly. Referring to the utmost importance of ensuring that all families at risk of hunger are covered by TPDS, Shri Pawar opined that there is an urgent for issuing ration entitlement authority slips for migrant labour or homeless population.
To achieve intended results, the Minister called for closely monitoring the complaints of diversion of foodgrains meant for PDS. He dubbed such reports and complaints disturbing and appealed for taking all possible measures to check the malpractice. Calling for effective publicity of the scale of issue, price of foodgrains and availability position at central, state, district and fair price shop levels, he said that the timely availability of foodgrains for the TPDS is best guarantee against diversion. In addition to existing monitoring mechanism, the TPDS also needs to be concurrently evaluated by agencies.
For ensuring smooth and more effective availability of foodgrains under PDS, Shri Pawar urged the State governments to ensure that there is a nodal officer in the state to decide on requirement of foodgrains under all welfare schemes which will avoid competing demands from different departments of a state. States should submit a monthly plan for rail movement and ensure more effective monitoring so that right quantities reach the right places as required. He called for making joint inspection on receipt of stocks within the State more effective for weeding out below fair average quality (FAQ) standard grains and also for monitoring utilization specially in areas showing higher consumption under SGRY/PDS and other schemes as many beneficiaries may be common. Shri Pawar also asked State Ministers to implement decentralized procurement of the grains available in states as the same would also benefit local farmers who could receive the freight charges of Rs.100 a quintal.
Speaking on the occasion Minister of State (F&PD) Dr. Akhilesh Prasad Singh also emphasized the need to overhaul PDS so that food grains are invariably and timely available in each and every corner of the country. He described the reports of starvation deaths a blot in view of sufficient stocks of foodgrains in the country. Professor Abhijit Sen, Member Planning Commission in his keynote address said that TPDS has served a useful purpose and needed to be strengthened to remove inefficiencies. He also referred to the variance in figures of people below poverty line from one region to the other and also from the point of under nourishment, etc. He called for making fair price shops viable and emphasized convergence of overlapping programmes targeting foodgrain distribution to the needy.
The meeting is schedule to consider the recommendations of State Food Secretaries meet held on September 17 on strengthening of Public Distribution System. The main items in the agenda for meeting included identification of beneficiaries, making fair price shops viable and the monitoring mechanism and related policy and implementation matters. The meeting had recommended a reconsideration of the criteria for classification of families under Below Poverty Line (BPL) by the Planning Commission to redetermine BPL estimates of all States. It was recommended that fair price shops should be allowed to function as STD booths, LPG/Kerosene oil dealers or distribution agents of other public utility items. Besides, cooperatives of women and ex-servicemen should be given priority in the matter of allotting fair price shop licenses. Measures suggested to make ration shops viable also included treating fair price shops as priority sector lending for bank credit, besides making them eligible for retail commission from the Central Government.
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