WE live in a dark phase filled with adversity. As dark and unpredictable as it gets. At this moment in the world, whatever flows, ruptures. Be it the flow (spread) of coronavirus, the flow of migration, the flow of money or the egregious flow of dis/information.
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Capturing the flow of dis/information campaigns in the digital ecosystem and the crisis of democracy is the nut graph of Martin Moore’s succinctly written book Democracy Hacked: Political Turmoil and Information Warfare in the Digital Age. The book is a primer on understanding the intersections between democracy, politics, deception and technological developments.
Digital media have reshaped contemporary politics in unprecedented ways. Moore argues that the old form of political communication has been supplanted by digital technologies, which have become a new force to reckon with. What Moore reveals in the book is downright desperation of political parties the world over to drub their opponents in uncanny ways by leveraging social media.
Cut to 21st century, social media and other platforms are being used to churn out deception and venom. Hatred and prejudice are in the networks as well as in the air. Moore details how social media, which had an idealistic agenda to begin with, have become indispensable to the political tumult in today’s democracy.
The author’s narrations reveal the seedy and sinister motives with which memes, texts and videos were produced, for instance, in the presidential elections in the United States in 2014. Donald Trump was held aloft while Hillary Clinton was downgraded on false grounds using mimetic warfare and trolling.
Images are used to ridicule, trivialise and ferociously malign people in the big league as much as ordinary people. Highlighting the key proposition of some businessmen, the author says that the object of using digital media in politics is to crush the mainstream media, which are presumably considered “left”.
The savage efforts to promote social media as a reliable source to seek information have caused truth to lose its ground and legitimacy in the public sphere. Instead, falsehood runs amok in the wildest manner possible.
The new plutocracy
The book underlines that technology is not inherently biased. It is the criminality of human minds that make it unleash nefarious activities. Moore sheds light on some of the digital dynasts who make plutocracy possible. One such plutocrat is Robert Mercer, who is anti-establishment, against climate change policies and oriented towards rupturing the public sphere and subverting democratic accountability.
He is neither a politician nor a public servant. He hunkered down for a while and, at the right moment, invested in digital media and big data. He led the frontal attack on democracy by scouring data from social media to target voters and manipulate their perceptions to his own ends, which is, say, to see that Trump won.
The author presents another plutocrat, Andrew Breitbart, who sees a plot in the arrival of the Frankfurt School scholars in the U.S. and alleges that they turned the country into a hotbed of Left ideologies. To jettison Left or “Democrat Media Complex” from the U.S. and the world is Breitbard’s arch mission.
The nexus between Mercer and Breitbart happened with the former investing in all digital schemes Breitbart executed. The author writes that Mercer continued to invest in several organisations building on the premise that all media are biased.
This led to Facebook, Twitter and other social media gaining traction and attracting people. Mercer next turned to Cambridge Analytica (CA), which is an offshoot of Strategic Communications Laboratory. No one knew the gamut of deception until the expose happened of mass-harvesting of Facebook users’ data that CA used to change the voting behaviours of people, be it in the U.S. or Brexit.
In brutal ways, CA used the harvested personal data to sell political ideas and ideologies to users, especially during Trump’s elections. All these point to the fact that Mercer and his ilk had only one goal to achieve—turn democracy on its head.
A new war
Subsequently, the author begins to scope out the widespread use of digital media to launch disinformation campaigns at geopolitical levels. It is the beginning of a new war, where there is no trench, no soldiers and no rationality.
It is a digital warfare with bots, algorithms, drones and the like on the frontline. It is not waged to conquer territories but minds. Moore argues that Vladimir Putin needed a framework to set up disinformation factories to establish Russia as a superpower. So, he spread the news that Russia was under attack from other countries and was being spied upon; its data hacked.
It is in the shadows of a lie that Putin constructed his digital empire, the author reveals. Russia, as part of its geopolitical guerilla warfare, identifies the weak spots in a country/person and inflames social media with divisive campaigns.
The task of controlling social media was not as easy as Putin might have thought. Internet is a vast architecture and he could not restrain the eruption of pluralistic views. Not the way he had TV and other media on a tight leash. This prompted him to establish battalions of content creators who needed to be nationalists and loyal to the Kremlin. The digital army of parties in India, as it is elsewhere, also commissions several people to write posts, create memes, produce disinformation campaigns, fill the space with fake news and spread disharmony and hatred.
Fixing elections
The second part of the book discusses how Facebook, Google and Twitter were used to fix and nix elections and how they helped many world leaders come to power. The author documents success stories of Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who used influencers on Facebook to reach audiences. Barack Obama and Trump made the best use of social media for their election campaigns. In India, Narendra Modi pioneered the social media blitz in 2014.
The ambivalence in the ideological functions of social media occurred when an unholy truce was struck between politics, advertising/marketing and big data. Subsequently, Facebook said that its strategy “helps people to connect with each other” to allow unverified news streaming into its space. Recently, Facebook announced it would not remove false claims made in Trump’s re-election campaign advertisements even if they happened to be flagrant lies.
Facebook wants to connect people but for a much different purpose than what its punchline would indicate. The more the merrier—the more data it could get about more users, the more exchange value it would get by profiling them and selling them to the new crop of political evangelists who are also the biggest spenders.
In addition, Facebook ramped up its affordances by adding News Feed, Instant Articles, Facebook Connect and dark posts to its kitty. Moore explains the role of technological innovations in helping Facebook achieve its twin goals, intertwined though, of economic growth and political disruption.
Cradle of anarchy
The book describes Google as the cradle of anarchy. Google is a search engine without parallel and less fierce competition. It is also known for overturning its initial pledge that it would not be consumed by any greed to attract ads.
When Google was exposed to the possibility of data mining and got the taste of algorithm gold rush, it had less concern for users or for its ethical degeneration. The search engine turned into a relentless surveillance engine, tracking what people search and its related activities. It bundles our preferences and sells us to advertisers. In the process, its imperialism grew to an extent that it swallowed as many digital companies as it could, thereby having a stranglehold on digital services in the market.
To add to that, wearable technologies synced with Google has contributed to what is known as cognitive capitalism. Moore, in a masked provocation, details that our digital footprints allow Google to deepen its pockets. Advertising is not about buying media space, but buying people, he remarks. To its credit, Google has its own regime of advertising bludgeoned through keywords, clickbait and several other ad features.
The author begins his discussion of Twitter in a very positive way, highlighting its potential as an emerging news source. He argues that gatekeeping by journalists has shifted to the public, who have become alternative sources. Twitter is an alarm system for journalists to understand what people perceive, the author writes.
He also discusses the downside of the growing use of Twitter for journalism. Local journalism has taken a back seat as journalists now depend on Twitter for news updates and as field reporting has also come down. On a large scale, this has resulted in the sacking of many journalists in legacy media firms.
Later, the author puts in perspective how Twitter is also used to spread aggression-filled and offensive comments. If Trump’s tweets are anything to go by, or some of the tweets by politicians in any part of the world are any indication, Twitter distorts news. Craving for fast-food journalism through Twitter kills trust and accuracy. The author also points out that there are many whose voices are not heard as social media are too remote for them to access economically and otherwise.
Question of privacy
The third part of the book focusses on platforms gaining momentum in the digital sphere and the world’s pressing question of privacy, surveillance and the irredeemable loss of the democratic zeitgeist.
The efforts of Amazon, Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase to set up a remote digital health-care facility to address health issues in 2018 did give rise to new hopes. It led to Amazon partnering with the American Heart Association and much later even hosting the Cancer Genome Atlas that housed huge amount of molecular structures. Amazon accomplished this using its cloud computing facility. But its biggest asset was the data of patients.
Likewise, the author explains how Google along with Deepmind, a data company, partnered with Royal Free Hospital in the United Kingdom that shared all its patients’ medical records. Digital platforms realised that there was wealth in health. Moore says that platforms are like online bazaars. Unlike traditional bazaars, platforms track consumers and keep collecting data on end even after they leave.
Public transport platforms such as Uber, Ola and Lyft and over-the-top entertainment platforms services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime run on data that users put in and which are then processed by algorithms in enigmatic ways.
Aadhaar & surveillance
The chapter on surveillance begins with how Indian governments have linked Aadhaar number to our life—be it getting a scholarship, passport, or food rations. While the previous government touted that it was introduced to ensure proper transfer of benefits to people, the current government adds to the existing list saying it is a digital identity that could be used to prevent bank frauds and terror attacks.
With Aadhaar, it has now become easier for the government to track an individual. In other words, there is nothing that an individual can claim to be his/her private information that the state does not know about. When it was presented before the Supreme Court that Aadhaar takes away the fundamental rights of citizens, the court ruled that Aadhaar cannot be made mandatory. However, the government has not compromised on its intent and considers Aadhaar as its panoptic weaponry.
Singapore’s Smart Nation is similar wherein digital infrastructures are used to control the population. China is leading the charge with its social credit system that tracks its citizens, awards points to them on the basis of their purchase behaviour. For instance, someone buying a pack of cigars may lose points as opposed to one buying napkins. In addition, Moore highlights that increasing surveillance has led to a data and algorithmic bias whereby it could be used to target one group of people.
Moore has offered an unvarnished account of plutocrats, social media companies, states and their policies and agendas in grand detail. On the one hand, he has captured their economic growth and, on the other, their role in political disruption.
The book has some interesting and thought-provoking pointers one cannot dispense with. The author’s critical remark that social media have depoliticised the youth by alienating them from rationality is going to be foundational for understanding society, people and their perceptions.
It is also disheartening to note that many among the youth have become mercenaries in digital armies of political parties, engaged in labour, producing a product called hatred, whose exchange value is disharmony and violence. In this regard, the author appeals to sensitise ourselves to the way democracy is muted and mutilated.
The crisis of democracy can be perceived but is as invisible as coronavirus. As the virus of disinformation spreads, religions are not spared on social media. It is crucial to understand where hate and lie originate before they are circulated through networks. Hate originates in the hating body and not in the hated body. Much as coronavirus demands a new economic world order, it is time for the economies of love, and not hate, to endure.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.
Consider this hypothetical situation: Rajalakshmi, from a remote Karnataka village spots a business opportunity.
She knows that flowers, discarded in the thousands by temples can be handcrafted into incense sticks.
She wants to find a market for the product and hopefully, employ some people to help her. Soon enough though, she discovers that starting a business is a herculean task for a person like her.
There is a laborious process of rules and regulations to go through, bribes to pay on the way and no actual means to transport her product to its market.
After making her first batch of agarbathis and taking it to Bengaluru by bus, she decides the venture is not easy and gives up.
On the flipside of this is a young entrepreneur in Bengaluru. Let’s call him Deepak. He wants to start an internet-based business selling sustainably made agarbathis.
He has no trouble getting investors and to mobilise supply chains. His paperwork is over in a matter of days and his business is set up quickly and ready to grow.
Never mind that the business is built on aggregation of small sellers who will not see half the profit .
Is this scenario really all that hypothetical or emblematic of how we think about entrepreneurship in India?
Between our national obsession with unicorns on one side and glorifying the person running a pakora stall for survival as an example of viable entrepreneurship on the other, is the middle ground in entrepreneurship—a space that should have seen millions of thriving small and medium businesses, but remains so sparsely occupied that you could almost miss it.
If we are to achieve meaningful economic growth in our country, we need to incorporate, in our national conversation on entrepreneurship, ways of addressing the missing middle.
Spread out across India’s small towns and cities, this is a class of entrepreneurs that have been hit by a triple wave over the last five years, buffeted first by the inadvertent fallout of demonetization, being unprepared for GST, and then by the endless pain of the covid-19 pandemic.
As we finally appear to be reaching some level of normality, now is the opportune time to identify the kind of industries that make up this layer, the opportunities they should be afforded, and the best ways to scale up their functioning in the shortest time frame.
But, why pay so much attention to these industries when we should be celebrating, as we do, our booming startup space?
It is indeed true that India has the third largest number of unicorns in the world now, adding 42 in 2021 alone. Braving all the disruptions of the pandemic, it was a year in which Indian startups raised $24.1 billion in equity investments, according to a NASSCOM-Zinnov report last year.
However, this is a story of lopsided growth.
The cities of Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, and Mumbai together claim three-fourths of these startup deals while emerging hubs like Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Jaipur account for the rest.
This leap in the startup space has created 6.6 lakh direct jobs and a few million indirect jobs. Is that good enough for a country that sends 12 million fresh graduates to its workforce every year?
It doesn’t even make a dent on arguably our biggest unemployment in recent history—in April 2020 when the country shutdown to battle covid-19.
Technology-intensive start-ups are constrained in their ability to create jobs—and hybrid work models and artificial intelligence (AI) have further accelerated unemployment.
What we need to focus on, therefore, is the labour-intensive micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME). Here, we begin to get to a definitional notion of what we called the mundane middle and the problems it currently faces.
India has an estimated 63 million enterprises. But, out of 100 companies, 95 are micro enterprises—employing less than five people, four are small to medium and barely one is large.
The questions to ask are: why are Indian MSMEs failing to grow from micro to small and medium and then be spurred on to make the leap into large companies?
At the Global Alliance for Mass Entrepreneurship (GAME), we have advocated for a National Mission for Mass Entrepreneurship, the need for which is more pronounced now than ever before.
Whenever India has worked to achieve a significant economic milestone in a limited span of time, it has worked best in mission mode. Think of the Green Revolution or Operation Flood.
From across various states, there are enough examples of approaches that work to catalyse mass entrepreneurship.
The introduction of entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in schools through alliance mode of working by a number of agencies has shown significant improvement in academic and life outcomes.
Through creative teaching methods, students are encouraged to inculcate 21st century skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and leadership which are not only foundational for entrepreneurship but essential to thrive in our complex world.
Udhyam Learning Foundation has been involved with the Government of Delhi since 2018 to help young people across over 1,000 schools to develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
One pilot programme introduced the concept of ‘seed money’ and saw 41 students turn their ideas into profit-making ventures. Other programmes teach qualities like grit and resourcefulness.
If you think these are isolated examples, consider some larger data trends.
The Observer Research Foundation and The World Economic Forum released the Young India and Work: A Survey of Youth Aspirations in 2018.
When asked which type of work arrangement they prefer, 49% of the youth surveyed said they prefer a job in the public sector.
However, 38% selected self-employment as an entrepreneur as their ideal type of job. The spirit of entrepreneurship is latent and waiting to be unleashed.
The same can be said for building networks of successful women entrepreneurs—so crucial when the participation of women in the Indian economy has declined to an abysmal 20%.
The majority of India’s 63 million firms are informal —fewer than 20% are registered for GST.
Research shows that companies that start out as formal enterprises become two-three times more productive than a similar informal business.
So why do firms prefer to be informal? In most cases, it’s because of the sheer cost and difficulty of complying with the different regulations.
We have academia and non-profits working as ecosystem enablers providing insights and evidence-based models for growth. We have large private corporations and philanthropic and funding agencies ready to invest.
It should be in the scope of a National Mass Entrepreneurship Mission to bring all of them together to work in mission mode so that the gap between thought leadership and action can finally be bridged.
Heat wave is a condition of air temperature which becomes fatal to human body when exposed. Often times, it is defined based on the temperature thresholds over a region in terms of actual temperature or its departure from normal.
Heat wave is considered if maximum temperature of a station reaches at least 400C or more for Plains and at least 300C or more for Hilly regions.
a) Based on Departure from Normal
Heat Wave: Departure from normal is 4.50C to 6.40C
Severe Heat Wave: Departure from normal is >6.40C
b) Based on Actual Maximum Temperature
Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥ 450C
Severe Heat Wave: When actual maximum temperature ≥470C
If above criteria met at least in 2 stations in a Meteorological sub-division for at least two consecutive days and it declared on the second day
It is occurring mainly during March to June and in some rare cases even in July. The peak month of the heat wave over India is May.
Heat wave generally occurs over plains of northwest India, Central, East & north Peninsular India during March to June.
It covers Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, parts of Maharashtra & Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana.
Sometimes it occurs over Tamilnadu & Kerala also.
Heat waves adversely affect human and animal lives.
However, maximum temperatures more than 45°C observed mainly over Rajasthan and Vidarbha region in month of May.
a. Transportation / Prevalence of hot dry air over a region (There should be a region of warm dry air and appropriate flow pattern for transporting hot air over the region).
b. Absence of moisture in the upper atmosphere (As the presence of moisture restricts the temperature rise).
c. The sky should be practically cloudless (To allow maximum insulation over the region).
d. Large amplitude anti-cyclonic flow over the area.
Heat waves generally develop over Northwest India and spread gradually eastwards & southwards but not westwards (since the prevailing winds during the season are westerly to northwesterly).
The health impacts of Heat Waves typically involve dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion and/or heat stroke. The signs and symptoms are as follows:
1. Heat Cramps: Ederna (swelling) and Syncope (Fainting) generally accompanied by fever below 39*C i.e.102*F.
2. Heat Exhaustion: Fatigue, weakness, dizziness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle cramps and sweating.
3. Heat Stoke: Body temperatures of 40*C i.e. 104*F or more along with delirium, seizures or coma. This is a potential fatal condition.
Norman Borlaug and MS Swaminathan in a wheat field in north India in March 1964
Political independence does not have much meaning without economic independence.
One of the important indicators of economic independence is self-sufficiency in food grain production.
The overall food grain scenario in India has undergone a drastic transformation in the last 75 years.
India was a food-deficit country on the eve of Independence. It had to import foodgrains to feed its people.
The situation became more acute during the 1960s. The imported food had to be sent to households within the shortest possible time.
The situation was referred to as ‘ship to mouth’.
Presently, Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns are overflowing with food grain stocks and the Union government is unable to ensure remunerative price to the farmers for their produce.
This transformation, however, was not smooth.
In the 1960s, it was disgraceful, but unavoidable for the Prime Minister of India to go to foreign countries with a begging bowl.
To avoid such situations, the government motivated agricultural scientists to make India self-sufficient in food grain production.
As a result, high-yield varieties (HYV) were developed. The combination of seeds, water and fertiliser gave a boost to food grain production in the country which is generally referred to as the Green Revolution.
The impact of the Green Revolution, however, was confined to a few areas like Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh in the north and (unified) Andhra Pradesh in the south.
Most of the remaining areas were deficit in food grain production.
Therefore the Union government had to procure food grain from surplus states to distribute it among deficit ones.
At the time, farmers in the surplus states viewed procurement as a tax as they were prevented from selling their surplus foodgrains at high prices in the deficit states.
As production of food grains increased, there was decentralisation of procurement. State governments were permitted to procure grain to meet their requirement.
The distribution of food grains was left to the concerned state governments.
Kerala, for instance, was totally a deficit state and had to adopt a distribution policy which was almost universal in nature.
Some states adopted a vigorous public distribution system (PDS) policy.
It is not out of place to narrate an interesting incident regarding food grain distribution in Andhra Pradesh. The Government of Andhra Pradesh in the early 1980s implemented a highly subsidised rice scheme under which poor households were given five kilograms of rice per person per month, subject to a ceiling of 25 kilograms at Rs 2 per kg. The state government required two million tonnes of rice to implement the scheme. But it received only on one million tonne from the Union government.
The state government had to purchase another million tonne of rice from rice millers in the state at a negotiated price, which was higher than the procurement price offered by the Centre, but lower than the open market price.
A large number of studies have revealed that many poor households have been excluded from the PDS network, while many undeserving households have managed to get benefits from it.
Various policy measures have been implemented to streamline PDS. A revamped PDS was introduced in 1992 to make food grain easily accessible to people in tribal and hilly areas, by providing relatively higher subsidies.
Targeted PDS was launched in 1997 to focus on households below the poverty line (BPL).
Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) was introduced to cover the poorest of the poor.
Annapoorna Scheme was introduced in 2001 to distribute 10 kg of food grains free of cost to destitutes above the age of 65 years.
In 2013, the National Food Security Act (NFSA) was passed by Parliament to expand and legalise the entitlement.
Conventionally, a card holder has to go to a particular fair price shop (FPS) and that particular shop has to be open when s/he visits it. Stock must be available in the shop. The card holder should also have sufficient time to stand in the queue to purchase his quota. The card holder has to put with rough treatment at the hands of a FPS dealer.
These problems do not exist once ration cards become smart cards. A card holder can go to any shop which is open and has available stocks. In short, the scheme has become card holder-friendly and curbed the monopoly power of the FPS dealer. Some states other than Chhattisgarh are also trying to introduce such a scheme on an experimental basis.
More recently, the Government of India has introduced a scheme called ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ which enables migrant labourers to purchase rations from the place where they reside. In August 2021, it was operational in 34 states and Union territories.
The intentions of the scheme are good but there are some hurdles in its implementation which need to be addressed. These problems arise on account of variation in:
It is not clear whether a migrant labourer gets items provided in his/her native state or those in the state s/he has migrated to and what prices will s/he be able to purchase them.
The Centre must learn lessons from the experiences of different countries in order to make PDS sustainable in the long-run.
For instance, Sri Lanka recently shifted to organic manure from chemical fertiliser without required planning. Consequently, it had to face an acute food shortage due to a shortage of organic manure.
Some analysts have cautioned against excessive dependence on chemical fertiliser.
Phosphorus is an important input in the production of chemical fertiliser and about 70-80 per cent of known resources of phosphorus are available only in Morocco.
There is possibility that Morocco may manipulate the price of phosphorus.
Providing excessive subsidies and unemployment relief may make people dependent, as in the case of Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
It is better to teach a person how to catch a fish rather than give free fish to him / her.
Hence, the government should give the right amount of subsidy to deserving people.
The government has to increase livestock as in the case of Uruguay to make the food basket broad-based and nutritious. It has to see to it that the organic content in the soil is adequate, in order to make cultivation environmentally-friendly and sustainable in the long-run.
In short, India has transformed from a food-deficit state to a food-surplus one 75 years after independence. However, the government must adopt environmental-friendly measures to sustain this achievement.