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Patna, (Bihar Times): Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has written a letter to Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Sharad Pawar stating that any proposal to impose a ceiling on the number of Below Poverty Line families for implementing the National Food Security Act would fundamentally be flawed.
The letter, written on Tuesday, said that it was not prudent to assume that the numbers arrived at through any survey, irrespective of the methodology adopted, would necessarily approximate the number fixed by the ceiling.
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He further said his own experience in this regard was highly illustrative of such gaps that resulted between the actual numbers found on ground in a survey and the ceiling fixed by the Government on the basis of poverty and population estimates.
Nitish said that against a total number of 65.23 lakh BPL families fixed by the Centre for Bihar, a recent survey had thrown up the number at nearly 1.5 crore families, after correcting for all errors of exclusion and inclusion.
“We, therefore, strongly believe that Targeted Public Distribution System can be operated under a system of joint responsibility between Centre and the State Governments only if the Centre also takes the responsibility for identification of beneficiaries,” the chief minister’s letter said. The letter pointed out that the objectives of the proposed act could be met more effectively by adopting a system of direct cash transfers to the beneficiaries instead of resorting to a complex delivery mechanism.
It further said the debate on estimates of poverty in India was far from conclusive and the estimates of Planning Commission in this regard captured nothing but a fraction of the actual reality.
The report of the Arjun Sengupta committee has concluded that the extent of poverty in India might be exceeding 80 per cent of the total population, even under the most conservative yardsticks, he said.
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