As far as the PDS is concerned, the report rejects the NAC’s very moderate proposals on the grounds that raising procurement levels would push up market prices. This argument is misleading: higher procurement would also mean higher distribution, and the two would, in principle, approximately cancel out as far as the effects on market prices are concerned. The net effect on market prices of raising both procurement and distribution could go either way, and is unlikely to be large.
Restricting PDS entitlements to priority groups would be very divisive, and would expose large numbers of poor people to exclusion errors. At least three independent national surveys show that about half of all poor households in rural areas did not have a BPL card in 2004-05 . There is no guarantee that the next BPL survey will be more reliable. Rough targeting may be attractive from the point of view of cost-effectiveness , but it is difficult to reconcile with the idea that protection from hunger is a fundamental right of all citizens.
This is not to say that the Rangarajan Committee report is devoid of useful ideas. For instance, I would support the suggestion that the identification of priority groups should be done by state governments rather than by the central government. But in terms of the core issue of putting in place legal safeguards for the right to food, I think that it is a setback.
The author is a visiting professor at the Department of Economics, University of Allahabad and a Member of the National Advisory Council. These are his personal views.