Contestations over Food Subsidy Policy : An Examination of the High Level Committee Recommendations

The report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (HLC henceforth) is the latest redefinition of the approach to food subsidy policy in India. Food subsidy has been one of the most contentious issues for policy-makers in the period of economic reforms. Shifting from the ‘Universal’ to a ‘Targeted’ approach with regard to the disbursement of food subsidies in 1997 was a major break since 1965, when the procurement policy was adopted and the FoodCorporation of India (FCI) was set up. Several questions have been raised regarding the poverty line used for the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) (Patnaik 2007, 2013; Dev and Ravi 2008).