Letters

PDS for family planning

Letters

Keep bees beaming

A question of political will

CHHATTISGARH “It was a crazy time and we took great risks,” said Alok Shukla. “Sometimes I shudder to think what would have happened if we had not succeeded. We would have been facing audit questions the rest of our lives.” Shukla was referring to his challenging time as food secretary of Chhattisgarh during 2007-08 when he transformed the crumbling and corrupt PDS into an efficient, streamlined organisation. Thankfully, Shukla succeeded and was given the Prime Minister’s Award for Excellence in Public Administration for 2008-09 along with two other officials.

To store and to have not

Since May the media has been beaming images of foodgrain rotting in various parts of the country. FCI’s investigation revealed that grain costing nearly Rs 50 lakh was damaged at Harduaganj, Orai and Hapur in Uttar Pradesh. “We have to procure all the grain that farmers bring to us if it meets the criteria. There is no limit to how much we can procure. In the past three years, because of good minimum support price, procurement has been massive,” said an FCI official.

From roaming to home delivery

The public distribution system is throwing up innovations, with officialdom seeking new ways of cracking the problem. However, some have remained non-starters despite their usefulness.

Pushing the food coupon

The Centre is pushing the concept of food coupons as a way of ending the inefficient public distribution system. First proposed in the Economic survey in February, the proposal has now been fleshed out by Kaushik Basu, chief economic adviser to the Ministry of Finance.

Letters

Subsidy for a select few

88,000 fake ration cards

THE Orissa government has cancelled over 88,000 bogus ration cards detected during a two-and-a-half-month drive by the state’s food supplies department.

Biblical proportions

PAINTING>> FOOD • USA To explain the super-sized American fare, scholars have turned to an unusual source: artists’ renderings of the New Testament’s Last Supper. Their findings show servings are marching heavenward for 1,000 years.

Failure from the jaws of success

The efforts to reduce child malnutrition in Chhattisgarh have hit a roadblock. The state has partially rolled back its policy of decentralized food provisioning in the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the key programme for reducing malnutrition amongst pre-school children.