Question

What are the advantages and disadvantages of public distribution system in India?

Answer 1

The following are the advantages of the public distribution system:

It has helped in stabilising food prices and making food available to consumers at affordable prices.

It has helped in avoiding hunger and famine by supplying food from surplus regions of the country to deficient regions.

The system of minimum support price and procurement has contributed to increase in foodgrain production.

The following are the disadvantages of the public distribution system;

Instances of hunger occur despite granaries being full. This points to certain lacunae or inefficiency in the system.

High level of buffer stocks often leads to wastage of foodgrains and deterioration in quality.

The storage of foodgrains inculcates high carrying costs on the government.

The provision of minimum support price has encouraged farmers to divert land from production of coarse grains that are consumed by poor, to rice and wheat.

Answer 2

Public food security system in India is a food security system which focusses to provide raw materials for food on low prices which everyone can afford. Following are the advantages and disadvantages of Public food security system.

Advantages

1) This system helps in reducing hunger by providing subsidized food grains to the consumers.

2) It reduced illegal marketing of food supplies as the government has an eye over the production and its distribution.  

3) There is increase in producing raw materials for food after application of minimum support price.  

Disadvantages

1) In order to provide the adequate food surplus, the government needs to maintain high level of buffer stocks which often leads to wastage of food grains and deterioration in quality.

2) The storage of food grains needs to store warehouses which inculcate high costs.

3) In order to provide subsidized food grains, the minimum support price system forced the farmers to divert their land from production of coarse grains to the production of such food grains which has more demand and low prices that are consumed by the poor consumers. It has an opposite impact on the economy.