Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana

• 06 May 2022

Why in News?

Recently, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution revised the PMKGAY (Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana) allocation of rice and wheat for all the 36 states/UTs for the remaining five months — from May to September 2022.

What is PMGKAY?

• About:
  • PMGKAY is a part of Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Package (PMGKP) to help the poor fight the battle against Covid-19.
    • Its nodal Ministry is the Ministry of Finance.
  • It was initially announced for a three-month period (April, May and June 2020), covering 80 crore ration cardholders. Later it was extended till November 2020.
    • Phase-I and Phase-II of this scheme were operational from April to June 2020 and July to November 2020 respectively.
    • Phase-III of the scheme was operational from May to June 2021.
    • Phase-IV of the scheme is currently operational for July-November 2021 months.
  • The scheme aimed at providing each person who is covered under the NFSA (National Food Security Act 2013) with an additional 5 kg grains (wheat or rice) for free, in addition to the 5 kg of subsidized food grain already provided through the Public Distribution System (PDS).
  • The new version of the PMGKAY lacks one of its important components which was there in 2020 PMGKAY i:e free-of-cost 1 kg pulses per month to each household covered under the NFSA.
• Expenditure:
  • The government will be incurring an expenditure of nearly Rs.2.60 lakh Crore in PMGKAY Phase I- V.
  • PMGKAY-V will entail an estimated additional food subsidy of Rs. 53344.52 Crore.

What are the Significance and Challenge?

• Significance:
  • It is significant in a view of daily wagers and informal sector entrepreneurs who lost their job in the wake of Covid-19 induced Lockdown.
• Challenge:
  • A key issue is that the beneficiaries of the National Food Security Act are based on the last census (2011). The number of food-insecure people has increased since then and they remain uncovered.

Source: IE