Dilemmas in Food Policy: About Institutional Contradictions and Vested Interests

The public distribution system (PDS) is one of the most important and costly welfare programmes in India. Till 1997 the PDS was a more or less universal programme, which distributed food to rich and poor cardholders alike. This universal set-up changed in 1997, when the government of India introduced targeting. The implementation of targeting proved, however, difficult. Based on fieldwork in two Indian states, Karnataka and Bihar, the paper discusses some of these difficulties. In particular, it focuses on some misconceptions and wrong assumptions underlying the introduction of the targeted PDS. Politicians and policy-makers have overlooked vested interests and institutional constraints, which often make it impossible or at least very difficult to implement the policies as they were meant to be implemented. The paper argues that policy discussions are insufficiently grounded in the day-to-day political and bureaucratic realities at the state and local level, and that this is, in part, related to the institutional organisation of the policy-making process itself.