It is high time that India’s foodgrain management is decentralized
In the euphoria surrounding the enactment of the National Food Security Act (NFSA) in 2013, its champions forgot to pay attention to a key ingredient for making it successful: the state of the food supply chain in India. As in much else, the existing setup was sufficient. From the procurement system run by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) to the fair price shops distributing foodgrains, the system was expected to run smoothly. Shortcomings such as leakages from the Public Distribution System (PDS) and the high cost of buying wheat and rice from farmers and distributing them were ignored in the ideological drumming up of support for the NFSA.
Some of these flaws that are sufficiently severe to call into doubt the effective running of NFSA have now been laid threadbare by the report of the High Level Committee (HLC) to recommend the restructuring of the Food Corporation of India (FCI), the government agency that manages the country-wide system of foodgrain purchase and distribution.
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