COVID-19 and India’s Food Subsidy Programmes!
Recommended for Secondary Grades
India’s Food Subsidy Programmes played a major role in 2020 according to a report from the International Monetary Fund. In 2019, 0.8 per cent of the population was living in extreme poverty. This proportion remained almost unchanged in 2021.
According to the report, India’s Food Subsidy Programs played a critical role in keeping poverty levels stable during the pandemic. Furthermore, the government has extended the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana until September 2022.
What is Public Distribution System?
In the public distribution system, which is run by the government, basic food and non-food goods are given to people who need them at very low prices in government-owned stores.
What is Antyodaya Anna Yojana?
Antyodaya Anna Yojana is a government-sponsored programme that gives low-cost food to millions of India’s poorest families. It’s meant to help them eat better.
Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana!
Prime Minister’s Food Security Scheme for the poor is called Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY). It was launched during the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020.
The goal of the scheme is to feed the poorest people in India by giving them grains through the Public Distribution System. People get help from the PMGKY scheme if they have ration cards and are part of the Antyodaya Anna Yojana scheme.
Under the PMGKAY, the government gives people 5 kg of food grains a month for free.
COVID-19 and India’s Food Subsidy Programmes!
Covid’s economic impact on people suffering from an extreme shortage of food supplies was softened by a safety net of free food grains as per the International Monetary Fund (IMF) report. Further, this helped the poor and kept poverty levels from rising sharply during the pandemic year 2020.
Extreme poverty has been at or below 1 per cent for the last three years, the report says. Some economists are careful when they use the poverty line to make observations and draw conclusions.
Using Poverty Line as a metric!
Experts are of the opinion that the distribution of income and the distribution of expenses are never the same. A national poverty line is made by looking at how poor people are in each state and how much things cost.
International poverty lines may not be the best way to look at things. Thus, you might see different things in different states, or between the high-cost and low-cost states, or when you move from rural to urban.
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