How would you feel if a family were to let its weakest members starve, even as the house’s granary is full to the brim? That is what is happening in india today.

As on March 1, stocks of wheat and rice with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) stood at around 77.6 million tonnes (mt). This was over three-and-a-half times the minimum operational buffer-cum-strategic stock of 21.04 mt required to be maintained for 1st April. Moreover, the new wheat crop, which is estimated to be around 20 mt bumper one, will arrive in the mandis from the coming month.

The same applies to pulses, where the National Agricultural Cooperative Marketing Federation of India (NAFED) was holding 2.25 mt of stocks as on March 19.
Some of this could be used to protect people from hunger during the coronavirus crisis.

Releasing food is all the more crucial as the emergency cash transfers (₹ 1.78 lakh crore) proposed by the finance minister are likely to have severe limitations :-
1) The amounts are small — for example, Rs 500 per month for three months to Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana accounts held by women, the flagship provision.
2) Exclusion errors are likely to be substantial — many poor households have no operational PMJDY account (there is, alas, little data on this).
3) There is the challenging issue of mass disbursement of cash in this crisis. In the poorer states, the density of rural banks is very low. Business correspondents (extension counters of the banks) are not safe at this time because they use fingerprint authentication. If their work is suspended, rural banks are likely to be massively overcrowded. Resolving this issue may take time.
4) Some of them will have to make expensive trips to distant banks and queue there for hours just to make enquiries. Some will be told that the computer is down, others that their account has been frozen for lack of biometric verification, others still may not reach the head of the queue.
– All this has been observed recently in Nagri Block (near Ranchi), where the Jharkhand government tried and failed to replace the PDS with so-called direct benefit transfers.

In short, food transfers are bound to play a big role in keeping poor people alive in the next few months. Food schemes such as the PDS and mid-day meals are in place in most villages, it is mainly a matter of reinforcing them. For this to happen, the central government must unlock the godowns and give plenty of food to the states. Never mind if the step takes the fiscal deficit a notch higher due to muddled accounting.