Abstract
India’s food policy is in a state of flux. This is a rare moment. Food policies and their governance have enjoyed stability and continuity for many decades. Indeed, the framework for these policies was set by the war-time interventions of the colonial government in India. Those interventions consisting of direct procurement of grain and rationed distribution had the object of securing food supplies for urban populations. Even though the objectives of food policy have mutated over the years, the interventions have not materially changed form despite changes in scale. The public distribution system (PDS) owes its origins to the rationing systems of World War II. The Food Corporation of India (FCI), the principal Central government parastatal responsible for foodgrain procurement and storage, was set up in the mid-1960s. The practice of offering support prices to rice and wheat also dates from that period. The series of reforms since 1991 that saw greater integration of India with world markets along with greater freedom for entrepreneurial activity left the food and agricultural sector largely untouched.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Dreze and Khera (2010), Himanshu and Sen (2011), See also the op-ed pieces, A Simple Proposal on Food Security, The Hindu, March 2012 (http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article2985212.ece), and It Simply Can’t Fail, The Hindustan Times, February 28, 2012 (http://www.hindustantimes.com/News-Feed/ColumnsOthers/It-simply-can-t-fail/Article1-818569.aspx).
- 3.
- 4.
In fact, as we shall point out later, the economic cost could be higher than the retail price.
- 5.
See Table 3 of Khera (2011).
- 6.
The diversion estimates from the recently released survey data for 2009/10 are of the order of 41 %.
- 7.
Press reports suggest that revisions of the bill propose a uniform entitlement to all the eligible population removing the distinction between priority and general households.
- 8.
For example, http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/NewDelhi/Food-grains-rot-in-FCI-godowns-across-India/Article1-578444.aspx, http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/foodgrains-rot-in-india-godown-no-space-to-store-bumper-crop/1/142399.html, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/food-grains-rotting-due-to-poor-storage-in-punjab/111709-3.html.
- 9.
- 10.
- 11.
In our evaluation of gaps between capacity and demand, we are ignoring here possible spatial mis-matches. For instance, the gaps are particularly severe in the so-called ‘non-traditional States’ that are now contributing to the procurement pool (Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh).
- 12.
For a detailed description see Dhand et al. (n.d.).
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Acknowledgment
We wish to record our gratitude to several people who spared their valuable time to talk to us: Najm-ul Ahasan, Brajesh Awasthi, Arvind Chourey, Satish Chaturvedi, Sejal Dand, Samir Garg, Paritosh Gupta, Neeta Hardikar, Sachin Jain, Rajeev Jaiswal, Sanjay Kaul, Ajit Kesari, Biraj Patnaik, Gangaram Paykra, Rajkumar, Rosiah Yelluri, Chandrika Zala and especially Suresh Sawant. We thank Shikha Jha, Rana Hassan and Ahsan Tayyab for their valuable comments. We alone are responsible for all errors of fact and interpretations in this document.
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Ramaswami, B., Murugkar, M. (2016). Incremental Reforms in Food Policy: What Are the Possibilities?. In: Dev, S., Babu, P. (eds) Development in India. India Studies in Business and Economics. Springer, New Delhi. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-81-322-2541-6_8
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