As the monsoon advances, there is an urgent need to consider what can be done to prevent hunger during the rainy season. Elaborate (200 Words)
Refer - The Indian Express
Enrich the answer from other sources, if the question demands.
IAS Parliament 5 years
KEY POINTS
· This monsoon is expected to be good, but the kharif harvest is many months away. Meanwhile, with their reserves depleted by the lockdown, millions of people will find it hard to keep on going. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) may help, but large numbers are likely to remain exposed to food insecurity.
· There is, thus, a strong case for extending the double rations beyond the end of June, for another three months at the very least. According to the official Foodgrains Bulletin, the “central pool stock” was as large as 80 million tonnes.
· Doubling food rations, however, is not going to help households that have no ration cards. As of now, ration cards issued under the National Food Security Act leave out more than 500 million people, a majority of whom have no ration cards at all (some have state-specific ration cards, with or without foodgrain entitlements).
· Because of abundant exclusion errors in the distribution of ration cards, those left out include not only the so-called middle class but also many poor households. Identifying poor households, a problematic exercise at the best of times, would be particularly difficult in this crisis situation, when time and resources are short.
Measures
· India’s poorest states are extraordinarily poor, with large sections of the population on the margins of subsistence. It is doubtful, for instance, that any country in the world has a higher concentration of extreme poverty and hunger than Bihar.
· A prolonged period of mass unemployment would spell disaster for millions of people there who barely survive from the meagre wages of casual labour in ordinary times.
· The poorest states, and their working population in particular, are likely to bear a disproportionate burden of the current economic crisis. In the better-off states, local workers may benefit from the mass departure of migrant workers in the form of better employment opportunities as and when the economy revives post-lockdown.
· For all these reasons, the poorest states urgently need special support, including additional foodgrain allocations. Universalising the PDS in the poorest states would take very little, because the baseline coverage there is already high.
Deepika 5 years
Please give feedback
IAS Parliament 5 years
Try to explain the flowchart. Keep Writing.
Surya 5 years
Please review
IAS Parliament 5 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
aswin 5 years
please review
IAS Parliament 5 years
Good attempt. Keep Writing.
Sanjeev Kumar Singh 5 years
Kindly give feedback
IAS Parliament 5 years
Good attempt. Try to focus on your presentation of the answer, provide proper spacing and alignment. Keep Writing.
Loading Comments