Is PDS a boon or a bane?

Food Health

Public Distribution System faces the loopholes in the taluk of Manvi

In the district of Raichur, the malnutrition has been soaring always. There are 14000 children in Manvi Taluk who are moderately malnourished and 300 children who are severely malnourished. Though the doctors in the Taluk said the malnourishment levels are decreasing, there are still kids who bear the brunt of it. Chandrasekhar Rao, Taluka Health officer said “In our taluk, the malnutrition levels have been high since man years, but now as we have taken initiatives and conducted awareness programs, the levels gone down. ASHA workers and Anganwadi workers are taking steps to make sure they take good care of these children. “

Anganwadis in the taluk are working for welfare of the villagers and their children. There are villagers who complain that the Anganwadis don’t function properly, most of the times, the teacher isn’t present there. While on the other hand a villager named Adaviamma said “It’s only in the Anganwadi that my grandchildren get to have a scrumptious meal.”

Adaviamma, an old lady in the village is living in the taluk since more than 40 years. She said “We used to live in a rented house, after my husband passed away; I shifted with my children to this area. Everybody in this area has been given a house except us; we built our own with some tin roofs on a government land. : We get ration once in a month. Earlier the government used to provide us around 20 kilos of rice, 1 kg dal, oil, soap etc but now they have stopped giving oil and soaps. The quantity of rice also has been reduced to just 5-6 kilos, dal is 1 kg.

More than half of the villagers are under the same problem. Most of them are facing it since more than two years. They said their situation has become worse as there are no rains, neither do they have any work to do and are under losses. Gowramma a villager said “It’s been more than 2 years that we have been facing this problem. We just get 10-15 kilos of rice now while earlier we used to get 35 kilos of rice. We used to sugar too, but that has also stopped now .The amount of ration we get isn’t even sufficient for a week. We don’t even get clean drinking water.”

Public distribution system was initiated by the government to regulate the prices of rice, pulses, oil, kerosene that the lower class can afford, but there is still a huge chunk of population who isn’t receiving the ration. The food security act was bought in to make sure that each and every section of the society gets the chance to have a proper meal with enough nutrition. But the meal of these villagers isn’t balanced; most of them only have one meal a day.

Loopholes are common in every system; working through the loopholes to build a better society will help in development of the country. As half of the country relies on agriculture, the existing schemes should be efficient to help the people.

 

 

 

 

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