Cabinet approves more allocations for Nagaland’s BPL families

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has given its approval for additional monthly allocation of 41,800 tonnes of foodgrains for the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families at BPL rates and 20,507 tonnes of foodgrains for Above Poverty Line (APL) families at 2/3rd of Minimum Support Price (MSP) rates.

The allocations are for three non-National Food Security Act (NFSA) states namely Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Nagaland, from April to June, 2016 or till implementation of NFSA by the respective State, whichever is earlier.

NFSA has come into force from 05.07.2013 and it provides for coverage of two-third population of the country, based on the population estimates of 2011 for receiving wheat at Rs.2 per kg and rice at Rs.3 per kg. It was expected that the Act would be implemented in all the States/UTs by March, 2016 and beneficiaries under Targeted Public Distribution Systems (TDPS) would get highly subsidized foodgrains.

Accordingly, during 2015-16 non-NFSA States/UTs were allocated additional foodgrains for BPL and APL families up to March, 2016. 33 States/UTs have implemented NFSA so far and three States, namely, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Nagaland are still getting allocation of food grains under the erstwhile TPDS. These States are in the process of implementation of NFSA in the coming months.

Below Poverty Line is an economic benchmark and poverty threshold used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. It is determined using various parameters which vary from state to state and within states.

The present criteria are based on a survey conducted in 2002. Going into a survey due for a decade, India's central government is undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line.

Internationally, an income of less than $1.90 per day per head of purchasing power parity is defined as extreme poverty. By this estimate, about 32.7% percent of Indians are extremely poor. Income-based poverty lines consider the bare minimum income to provide basic food requirements; it does not account for other essentials such as health care and education. The number of people living on less than $1.9 per day in 2011 was 259.5 million (21.3% of the total population).

Some media reports said that there are 363,000,000 people in India below the poverty line. A new panel has found that 29.5 per cent of India's population was poor in 2011-12 against just 21.9 per cent estimated under the previous methodology which had drawn sharp criticism from various quarters.

(Al Ngullie, June 2, 2016, Eastern Mirror)

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