India’s Financial Express has published an Op-Ed by Anjani Kumar.
This Op-Ed looks at the success of India’s public distribution system (PDS) in Odisha, a state marred with a high incidence of poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
In 2004, Odisha began with a state-of-the-art PDS to cover the entire network for greater transparency and accountability. The PDS took into account population coverage, a decrease in grain prices, simplified entitlements, and community management.
The Odisha experiment shows gains and successes, but it also demonstrates what went wrong, and how to avoid those pitfalls.
Odisha illustrates that PDS can play a pivotal role in bringing convergence and making India’s two important missions–food and nutrition security–successful in a short time.