The National Food Security Act (NFSA) is unlikely to come into effect from July 1 in Jharkhand in any proportion as Union Minister for Food and Civil Supplies Ram Vilas Paswan instantaneously rejected the State’s plea to allow phase-wise implementation of the world’s largest poverty alleviation programme.
Paswan, who was in Ranchi to review the State’s preparedness with regard to readiness of the delivery system and state of procurement processes, said implementation in bits and pieces is an unlikely scenario as the Ministry would not allow the State to roll out the scheme with half measures.
The meeting convened at Hotel BNR Chankya was attended by Food and Civil Supplies Minister Saryu Roy, officials of the department and Food Corporation of India besides, district supplier officers of Jharkhand.
While responding to the request of the department, Paswan said, “It cannot be done in phases. Stopping corruption and ensuring transparency are among the salient features of the Act. If it is not implemented in totality, then entire effort will go waste. If it has to be implemented, it has to be done completely”.
The State Government conveyed their level of preparations with regard to 10 points of compliance to sought permission to implement the Act from July 1 in some districts and vowed to complete the exercise to cover entire population of beneficiaries under the largest social sector scheme for the poor by August 31. However, Paswan unequivocally suggested dropping the idea and revising the date to go ahead with the scheme as the Ministry would bear with small delays but not pushing the scheme without full preparation.
Paswan asserted, “If you want to take time till August then better take it but implement it completely. In that scenario food grains that is being supplied will not be stopped but the State will stand to lose” and questioned “if the State Government is prepared to implement the Act in all districts after August 31IJ”
The Union Minister expressed dismay over efforts made by the department of Food & Civil Supplies to complete the exercise before July 1 and said that the entire exercise has been trapped in the working style of the department. Paswan also sought explanation about alleged mismanagement of grains distributed to a ration card holder and directed officials to iron out the anomalies in the system.
The visiting Union Minister was apprised that the end-to-end computerisation of the supply chain is in advance stage, about 75-lakh additional beneficiaries will be added in next couple of days and the database of beneficiaries will be uploaded in about one-month. Incidentally, the department cited non-availability of booth-level-officers (BlOs) in big cities to carry out preliminary activities as the single bottleneck for reaching out to the actual recipients of food grains that will supplied under NFSA.
Notably, around 1.39 metric tonne of food grains would be required per month to feed 2,64,43,330 beneficiaries spread in two cateogories-Antodaya Families and Priority Household-- of 50,08,304 families across Jharkhand through NFSA.