States told to document food needs of migrants

We have told food ministers if there are needy people who may or may not have a ration card, or are outside the system, like migrant workers, we have enough stocks.

RAM VILAS PASWAN , Union food and public distribution minister

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Saturday said it is planning measures to ease difficulties that migrant workers were facing and states ought to prepare local databases urgently to be able to respond to their immediate needs of food and shelter as thousands of them left jobless because of the lockdown continued to leave cities.

Union food and public distribution minister Ram Vilas Paswan said he has asked food ministers of states to document and locate migrant workers in major cities, give them provisional ration cards and provide estimates of ration to federal authorities. “The Prime Minister is worried. I am worried. But we need a system to take food to the migrants. That is why we recommended state food ministers that basic details such as location, number of migrants, clusters, and food requirements must be prepared urgently,” Paswan said.

Paswan said 810 million beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS) , who are eligible for subsidised food, were receiving their regular ration. Under the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, these beneficiaries are also being given double their current food entitlement free of cost for three months. The scheme was launched on March 26 to protect the poor from the impact of national lockdown imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19.

“We have told food ministers if there are needy people who may or may not have a ration card, or are outside the system, like migrant workers, we have enough stocks,” Paswan said. He said states could also organise kitchens by utilising funds under the State Disaster Relief Fund and National Disaster Relief Fund to tide over the immediate crisis. Some states have to start provisioning for migrant workers, Paswan said. “The Centre will provide grains as per the current requirements...” he said.

India has an estimated 140 million migrant workers who keep the urban economy afloat. They belong mostly to poorer states such as UP, Jharkhand, and Bihar and shift to more prosperous ones like Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu to work as manual labour hauling bricks and building material at construction sites or work in shifts in factories.

Federally held food stocks currently stand at around 56 million tonne, while 6 million tonne is needed for the next three months.

“How would it feel if the weakest members of a family starve despite the household’s granary being full?” asked economist Jean Drèze, a long-time advocate of the right to food. He said food should be given without documentation to everyone who needs it. Drèze has urged for universalising access to the PDS.

The plight of migrant workers could have been cushioned by a federal programme, ‘One Nation One Ration Card’, launched last year to make subsidised rations portable but is still work in progress. Paswan said he had approved the on-boarding of UP, Bihar, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Dadra & Nagar Haveli and Daman & Diu on the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ platform.

According to Chinmay Tumbe, the author of ‘India Moving - A History of Migration’ and faculty at Iim-ahmedabad, India’s migration is circular as people keep moving from city to city until they return home at one point before moving out again. This means a portable food distribution system has to be capable of continually tracking the workers, who make up 29% of the nation’s workforce.