New official data show that the proportion of Indian households using the Public Distribution System has nearly doubled over seven years. These households are relying more on the PDS and less on open market sources than before.
The National Sample Survey Organisation’s report on the ‘Public Distribution System and Other Sources of Household Consumption’ was released last week and looks at findings from a nationally representative survey on the use of the PDS conducted in 2011-12.
The report finds that the proportion of households which reported consuming grain purchased through the PDS was up to 46 per cent of all households in the case of rice and 34 per cent in the case of wheat for rural India, which is a near doubling since 2004-05, and an increase over 2009-10.
In urban India, the proportion of households reporting they bought wheat from a ration shop has more than tripled in seven years to 19 per cent, while the proportion of urban households buying PDS rice has nearly doubled to 23 per cent.
Simultaneously, the monthly per capita consumption of grain bought from the PDS has grown in both rural and urban areas, while the amount of grain bought from other market sources – while still accounting for the majority of an individual’s consumption — has fallen.
The numbers also clearly show the centrality of the PDS to poor households; the proportion of a family’s food consumption that comes from the PDS is highest among the poorest five per cent, and then falls slowly as families get richer. Even among the richest five per cent in rural India, the PDS accounts for 20 per cent of rice consumption and ten per cent of wheat consumption.
Among States, nearly 90 per cent of households in rural Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh report consuming PDS rice, and over 75 per cent in Kerala and Karnataka. Over 70 per cent of households in Karnataka and 60 per cent of households in Tamil Nadu told the NSSO that they consume PDS wheat as well.
Activists attribute the rise in the number of households consuming grain from ration shops to the improved functioning of the PDS in several States. Economists Reetika Khera and Jean Dreze have shown that diversion in PDS grain has declined sharply in several States, including Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Odisha, and attribute this to the expansion and improvement of the PDS in those States. Six other studies have shown similarly.
A study commissioned by the new government claimed last year that the PDS was leaky and was not improving and recommended a move to cash transfers. But Food and Civil Supplies Ministry officials insisted on Monday that “there is no plan at the moment to wind up the PDS.”
