Economist Dreze writes to Nitish, criticizes PDS in Bihar

PATNA: “I am disappointed to find no further progress in the public distribution system (PDS) in the state”, says noted development economist Jean Dreze in a letter addressed to the Bihar CM Nitish Kumar. In a letter to CM Nitish Kumar on Monday Dreze said: “As you know, we have been watching the

PDS

in Bihar with keen interest. We were impressed with the rapid improvements that took place until 2014, but disappointed to find no evidence of further progress in our most recent survey in June 2016”.

“We are writing to share our apprehensions about the imposition of points of sale (PoS) machines in the PDS, and also about replacing food with cash”, says Dreze who is associated with Ranchi university and the Delhi School of Economics in a letter to CM. Dreze a close colleague of Amartya Sen has done most of his work is concerned with hunger, poverty, education, health and other aspects of social policy.

The letter further said, “we hear that the central government is putting pressure on state governments to explore two alternatives to the PDS: switch to cash, or deploy Aadhaar-enabled machines at ration shops. In response to this pressure, several state governments have started using PoS machines”. “The experience of these states (especially Rajasthan and

Jharkhand

) with PoS machines is very negative. On the one hand, PoS machines fail to address the main source of corruption, which is quantity fraud (dealers give people less than their full entitlements) rather than identity fraud”, he feels.

He said that In Ranchi district (the pilot district in Jharkhand), PDS cardholders have been getting less than half of their entitlements since the PoS system was made compulsory. Imposing a technology that does not work on people who depend on it for their survival is a grave injustice. The banking system in Bihar, according to him is simply not ready to handle mass cash transfers. As with MNREGA wages and social security pensions, the payments are likely to be very irregular and chaotic, depriving people of the little security they have from the PDS and causing much discontent, he pointed out.

Making suggestion to the CM, he said Instead of switching to other systems that are almost bound to fail, “we feel that the Bihar government should persevere with well-tested PDS reforms – timely door-step delivery of grain, putting ration lists and other PDS data online, ensuring a fixed schedule for delivery of grain, etc. “Some of these reforms have already been initiated in Bihar, with significant results, but others are yet to be implemented (in our experience, for instance, very few PDS shops in Bihar have an information board). Further, much more needs to be done to make PDS dealers accountable, if not replace remove them altogether as has been done with much success in

Chhattisgarh

and Odisha”, Dreze said in a letter to CM Nitish.

"The Bihar government could also consider using non-biometric PoS machines that record transactions in offline mode, for weekly uploading on the PDS portal. This would ensure reliable recording of last-mile transactions without the fatal dependence on multiple fragile technologies inherent in the PoS system", he made a plea to the CM. Besides Dreze, his team members Kamayani Swami, Reetika Khera, Ashish Ranjan are also the joint signatories of the letter.