Food Security in a Regional Perspective : A study of public distribution system in Orissa, India

Paradox of Food Insecurity (FI) with plenty of Food has been found in Orissa, India, like any other part in World. Investigating into the causes, we found that - Entitlement failure rather than Food Availability Decline is the detrimental factor of Food Deprivation in Orissa. This has supported the arguments of the Nobel laureate Amartya Sen (1981). Public support through Public Distribution System (PDS) could have reduced FI but its' poor designing, implementation & functioning left the poor in the cold. The household data collected from field exhibits - PDS could not reduced FI substantially, mainly due to meager amount of entitlement of rice, higher subsidy in sugar and existence of targeting errors (both Type I & Type II errors), which has led to inefficient income transfer. PDS provides only around 11 percent of the monthly per capita consumption to the surveyed households. Hike in the issue prices of PDS ration has cascading effects in reducing the household's expenditure on food, cloth, education and health substantially. But given the weaker demand side; a well-designed PDS is necessary in the state. The book will be useful for researchers, academicians & policy makers.