Farmers’ body criticises govt for slashing per person quota of wheat under PDS

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, March 28

The Jamhoori Kisan Sabha (JKS) has criticised the state government for slashing per person quota of wheat given to poor people under public distribution system. The sabha has asked the government to provide sufficient wheat to the poor families.

Addressing a gathering of the workers here, Dr Satnam Singh Ajnala, state president of the JKS, said that as per requirements of nutrition, a hardworking person requires at least 400 gm of wheat daily. “With this standard, the total per person consumption of PDS beneficiaries considering that they are poor and have to do manual labour to earn their livelihood, they require 12 kg of wheat every month,” he said.

He argued that recently the beneficiaries of the scheme were getting five kilograms of wheat per person but the government had reduced the per person allocation of the beneficiary families by 28 per cent. “With the reduced allocation, now a family from poor set up is getting only 3.6 kilograms of wheat which is insufficient as per their dietary requirements,” said Dr Ajnala.

He further added that considering the high inflation rate, the government should also consider providing more kitchen items under the PDS system. “All this was not required if the labourers were getting fair wages and adequate working hours. However, as the government has failed to provide any of these conditions whereby a person can earn his or her livelihood in a honest way, a government which claims to be pursuing socialist values needs to provide for its people,” he said.

The government is pursuing pro corporate policies in which a common human being is merely a human resource which can be exploited merely to increase profits, he added. “For the corporate, a human being is just a resource, like another raw material which he exploits to produce a product and to maximise his profits. A government which claims itself to be working for the masses must act in the interest of the masses,” he said.