NEW DELHI : The Centre should not “hurry” the implementation of the National Food Security Act in the rest of 25 states and UTs given the present level of unpreparedness and “apprehensions” over its delivery, says an ICRIER paper.
The NFSA, passed by Parliament in September, has been so far rolled out in 11 states and Union Territories. The rest of 25 states/UTs have not implemented it yet. The deadline for implementing it has been extended twice, to April 4.
The law aims at providing legal entitlement to 5 kg of subsidised foodgrains per person per month at Rs 1-3/kg to two-thirds of the country’s population.
“However, given the present level of unpreparedness and uncorrected systemic inefficiencies of the state PDS machinery, the likelihood of states defaulting on even the extended deadline is high,” said the ICRIER working paper co-authored by former CACP chief Ashok Gulati.
“Therefore, the immediate suggestion is not to hurry the NFSA implementation process, especially not without satisfying its pre-conditions in each state,” it said.
This time should be used to carefully re-visit the objectives of the Act and provisions looking for efficient ways to attain them, it added.
Highlighting key challenges in implementing NFSA, the paper observed, “There are wider apprehensions that the Act will fail to deliver on the promises made or will deliver at a huge cost, which may not be worth the price.”
The bigger operational challenges include ensuring the adequate supply of grains every year, lowering per person entitlement or population coverage particularly when the population is expanding, unpreparedness of the implementing states, and slowing down the natural process of agricultural diversification by increasing the relevance of rice and wheat in the system, it added.
On unpreparedness of implementing states, the paper said that the progress on the public distribution system (PDS) improvement initiatives is both slow and below expectations.
“….States have been implementing the NFSA with old TPDS beneficiaries being rechristened as NFSA beneficiaries instead of undertaking fresh surveys/efforts to identify beneficiaries. This is undesirable and does not conform to the reform process initiated under the new system,” it said.
As on August 1 2014, 100 per cent identification of beneficiaries has been completed only in six states – Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Punjab and Rajasthan – out of the 11 NFSA implementing states.
The identification is still partial in the remaining five states – Bihar (87 per cent), Delhi (44 pc), Himchal Pradesh (73 pc), Madhya Pradesh (88 pc) and Chandigarh (40 pc).
The SECC (Socio Economic And Caste Census) final list of survey results is ready for just 11 states – Assam, Goa, Karnataka, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Chandigarh, Lakshwadeep, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur and West Bengal. The draft list, however, is ready for 22 states, the paper said.
Of the 11 implementing states, Delhi is one state that still has not published its draft list of identified beneficiaries. Eight of these 11, though, have the draft list ready but do not yet have the final SECC results ready, it added.
Karnataka and Chandigarh are the two states that have implemented the NFSA and have the final SECC results ready for all districts, it added.
As far as progress by states/UTs under the plan scheme for end-to-end computerisation of the various public distribution system (PDS) operations is concerned, – as on September 30, 2014, 33 states out of the 35 have completely digitised the fair price shops (FPS) data, the paper said.
Around 17 states have digitised ration card data, nine states — Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Gujarat, Karnataka, MP, Odisha, TN and Maharashtra — have implemented online-allocation and only four (Delhi, Chhattisgarh, TN and Karnataka) have implemented the computerisation of the supply-chain management in the said period.
Emphasising that there is a need to devise an appropriate income policy instrument to substitute NFSA, the paper said: “The answer lies in substituting the present system of physically distributing grains with conditional cash transfers, based on the platform created by the Aadhaar unique identity (UID) scheme.”
To implement the landmark food law, the annual foodgrain requirement is estimated at 61.43 million tonnes, while annual food subsidy implication of around Rs 1.31 lakh crore. (agencies)
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