Activists urge India gov’t to be more cautious in implementing new food subsidy scheme
The Modi administration's "One Nation, One Ration" scheme will replace the Indian's government’s food security net that links ration cards to the beneficiaries’ home address, making food entitlements inaccessible among India’s tens of millions of internal migrant workers. Activists belonging to the Right to Food Campaign network said the new scheme must ensure that "every one in the nation gets ration."
Right to food activists are urging the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi “to proceed with more caution” in implementing its “One Nation, One Ration (ONOR)” scheme that will enable ration card holders to secure their supply of subsidized food grains from any fair price shop (FPS) across India.
In a recent statement, the Right To Food Campaign (RTFC), an informal network of individuals and organizations committed to the realization of the right to food in India, said that while it was “good that the government has taken the need for the portability,” of the ration cards, the ONOR should first be pilot-tested within states before a nationwide rollout.
“There should first be intra-state experiments of the scheme,” the RTFC said, noting that these would “provide a chance to learn about the logistical challenges that such a delivery mechanism poses, such as “for stocking of FPS, operationalization of grievance redress, and other aspects of the public distribution system (PDS) implementation.”
“Only based on the experience of such experiments should the government decide on expanding portability of PDS entitlements across the country,” the network added.
The ONOR will replace the government’s food security net that links ration cards to the beneficiaries’ home address, making food entitlements inaccessible among India’s tens of millions of internal migrant workers.
Moreover, the RTFC called on the government to consider using “simpler and more reliable technologies” for implementing the ONOR scheme such as using contactless smart cards.
It said “hasty restructuring” of the public distribution system could lead to “widespread disruptions in people’s access to food security,” especially among the “most vulnerable.”
“One Nation, One Ration should mean that everyone in the nation gets ration,” RTFC added.
Read the full statement of the Right To Food Campaign-India regarding its position on the ONOR here and here.
Also visit RTFN-India's Facebook page by clicking this link.