How 27 million more rural households are buying PDS rice in India

Rural and urban, the reliance on PDS cereals has risen dramatically in just five years.

The public distribution system (PDS) is the only means by which a large and rapidly growing number of households in India’s districts and towns is able to mitigate somewhat the rising cost of a basic food basket in an attempt to reach a calorific and nutritional minimum. The share of PDS in the consumption of rice and of wheat (and ‘atta’) has risen steeply between the last such survey, in 2004-05, and the 2009-10 survey, whose results have been released.

I combined the data from the latest report based on the 66th round of the National Sample Survey Office – (NSSO, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India) which is its quinquennial survey of household consumer expenditure – with the results of the two censuses (2001 and 2011). The result? The number of rural households reporting consumption of PDS rice was 63.3 million in 2009-10 compared with 35.9 million five years earlier.

Likewise, the number of rural households reporting consumption of PDS wheat (or ‘atta’) was 44.6 million in 2009-10 compared with 16.1 million five years earlier, the number of urban households reporting consumption of PDS rice was 15.1 million compared with 8 million, and the number of urban households reporting consumption of PDS wheat (or ‘atta’) was 12.9 million compared with 3.5 million.