Food Security Act beneficiaries yet to be identified

Delay by States in specifying fresh criteria and completing verification

September 15, 2014 12:56 am | Updated November 16, 2021 05:49 pm IST - New Delhi:

More than a year after the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed, beneficiaries are yet to be identified as States have delayed specifying fresh criteria and completing verification. Even the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC), which was proposed in 2011 as a comprehensive survey to identify socio-economic characteristics of the poor and to be used to identify NFSA beneficiaries, is more than two years behind its scheduled May 2012 completion.

The agencies involved in the SECC — the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), the nodal agency to provide enumeration devices and data entry operators, and state officials — blame one another for the delays.

The claims and objections process, which follows the draft lists, is under way in 272 districts of the total 640 districts, while over Rs. 3,237 crore of the allocated Rs. 3,543 crore has been spent already.

With the SECC far from complete, a few States have proposed their own criteria, which may be less robust and transparent than the SECC.

Data glitches stall roll out of Food Security Act

Technological and procedural delays in identifying the intended beneficiaries of the >National Food Security Act (NFSA) has seen the agencies involved — the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), the Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), the nodal agency to provide enumeration devices and data entry operators, and state officials -- indulge in a blame game.

For the Socio-Economic Caste Census survey, proposed as the basis of the identification process, enumerators used scanned images of handwritten data from the National Population Register (NPR) to verify household members’ basic details. They were accompanied by data entry operators (DEOs) who entered the responses into a tablet computer.

“Initially, the plan was to collect data and digitise it later. A year on, it was decided that scans of handwritten documents would create confusion when displayed as these may not be legible. We decided to digitise the NPR data before displaying the drafts lists in villages, which took time,” explained a Ministry official.

Congress-ruled States such as Delhi, Rajasthan, and Himachal were quick to do roll-outs before elections, some using data from 2002 and 1998 rather than that of the SECC. Most States are yet to finalise their own criteria based on Central guidelines.

In Jharkhand, officials blame difficulties in digitisation and merging of NPR data with the SECC. “Three vendors were employed by ECIL here. The DEOs provided by the vendors were so poorly trained, we had to do re-evaluation in three districts,” said a State official. The State is struggling to complete the SECC even as it is yet to finalise its own criteria.

In Odisha, the local vendors hired by the ECIL withheld the SECC database files for several months last year as the DEOs’ salaries had not been paid on time by Central agencies. The State has announced its own criteria for the NFSA.

“The SECC is the most reliable source to identify Food Act beneficiaries and is more transparent. In Jharkhand, Assembly elections are coming up so they may push the SECC to next year. States like Tamil Nadu, which have universal coverage, are dragging their feet as they wish to keep the coverage universal,” said economist Jean Drèze.

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