By Sujata Jena
Bhubaneswar: Organizations and individuals working on women’s rights and food issues in Odisha on March 5 demanded inclusion of women in public distribution system.
“A large number of newly wed women are unable to access their share of ration. This is because their names are cancelled from their parental card but not added to their marital cards,” says a press release issued by the Odisha unit of Right to Food Campaign.
The campaign also points out that families find it difficult to add names of children to their family’s ration card.
According to Sameet Panda, the campaign’s co-convener, the Odisha state lacks a clear and transparent process to port names of migrated individuals or to add new individuals to ration cards. “The process remains just as opaque and difficult to navigate after Aadhaar seeding and digitization of PDS or implementation of the One Nation One Ration Card scheme,” the activists explains.
Millions of women migrate after marriage, and many of them risk exclusion from the Public Distribution System, the press release says.
For example, the 2011 census shows that 46 percent of migration was due to marriage and among them 97 percent were women. The census also reports that 78 percent of Odisha’s population is PDS beneficiaries.
Observing the widespread exclusion of women, it is estimated that at least 1 million women have been left out from PDS since the National Food Security Act of 2013 came into force.
The press release also says people’s access to food has drastically reduced after the Covid-19 lockdown and the resulting loss of income. “Exclusion from PDS will further decrease food intake of families, and worsen the already abysmal nutritional status of children, adolescent girls and women,” the campaign laments.
It wants the Odisha government to commit to improving transparency and accessibility of PDS. As the first step, the government must start a standard operating procedure to port newlywed women’s names from parental to marital ration cards in a time-bound manner. A grievance redressal system should be implemented to identify and fix gaps in the process, the statement adds.
The food activists want to improve transparency at the Fair Price Shops (FPS) that distributes subsidized food under PDS. They want a mechanism to inform the beneficiary when his or her is name is deleted or added. At present women have no means to know if their names have been added to their marital family’s card after being deleted from the parental card.
Furthermore, since the ration card management system is dynamic, information must be easily available for beneficiaries so that they can verify their status. For this, the list of beneficiaries must be pasted at each FPS every month. These two measures can improve access of newly wed to their entitlement.