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Towards Hunger Free India - Media Coverage 25 April 2001, Financial Express,
New Delhi, India Vajpayee admits failure of PDS machinery
Our Economic Bureau
PRIME MINISTER Atal Behari Vajpayee admitted that the implementation of the public distribution system (PDS) had not measured up to the public's expectations.
Inaugurating the seminar on "Towards a Hunger Free India", organised jointly by the Planning Commission, World Food Programme (WFP) and MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in the Capital on Tuesday. Mr. Vajpayee said that the targeted PDS did not seem to be working well in many places, especially in the poorer North and North-Eastern states. The limited offtake in the states where the majority of our poor live, points to serious deficiencies in the administrative capability of the system, he said and urged the concerned state governments to effectively remedy this situation at the earliest. Even implementation of free food provided to school children under the mid-day meal scheme leaves much to be desired, he said and cautioned that democracy and hunger cannot go together. A hungry stomach questions and censures the system's failure to meet what is a basic biological need of every human being.
the Prime Minister stated that the shortcomings at the implementation level could be overcome by ensuring greater people's participation and monitoring. He called upon the participation of 'Panchayati Raj' institutions, state and Centre, NGOs and international agencies to make the 'Food for All' mission a success. He urged the religious institutions belonging to all communities to continue with their mass feeding programmes, especially in times of natural calamities.
Mr. Vajpayee said that while there was a need to substantially increase food production, the country faced with the paradoxical problem of surplus food stock. There was also a related problem of substantial quantities of food being wasted in storage, preservation, processing and distribution. He said that there was a need to find innovative ways using the surplus food stocks and suggested that it could be used for furthering female literacy programmes.
Planning Commission's deputy chairman KC Pant stated that despite the increase in foodgrains production the availability of foodgrains remained below the normative needs of the population.
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