India’s national food security programme: a strategic insight

Abstract

Indian National Food Security Programme, with a goal to provide highly subsidized food grains to more than 800 million people in every nook and corner of the vast country, faces strategic challenges related to production, procurement, storage, transportation, distribution, finance, and organization. While the production issues are related to low yield, small farm size, and lack of financial support, the procurement process is skewed and lacks integration with the markets. The storage facilities are inadequate and are non-optimally located. Transportation facilities lack coordination leading to multiple loading and unloading of the food grains. Leakage and improper distribution of food grains are also big challenges. Very high subsidy, inefficient processes, and a large work force have brought to the fore the question of financial viability of the programme. There are also organizational issues related to payment disparity and resistance to labor reforms. The paper has also given a framework for efficient implementation of the programme using cloud system with effective procurement and stock management policy measures.

Modelling supply chain network for procurement of food grains in India

“…Several major issues associated with FSC such as unscientific and skewed procurement process, inadequate storage facilities, improper planning and coordination decisions, leakages and irregular distribution of food grains are highlighted by multiple scholars in their studies (e.g. Mahapatra and Mahanty 2018;Maiyar et al 2015;Balaji and Arshinder 2016;Parwez 2014;Viswanadham 2006). According to the Dalwai Committee Report on doubling farmers' income (2017), approximately 70% of the rice and wheat produced in 14 years was not procured by FCI /State Government agencies (from 2002-03 to 2017-18).…”

“…There are two major harvesting seasons, namely, 'Kharif' and 'Rabi' for food grains in India (Mahapatra and Mahanty 2018). Wheat is procured during Rabi (April to June) and rice in Kharif (October to February) harvesting seasons (Mogale et al 2017b).…”

“…The lack of using reliable analytical models in the decision-making process is leading to frequent disruptions, resulting in the wastage of resources and increased inventory costs(Maiyar et al 2015). Unscientific decisions made by policymakers are making these operations fragile(Mahapatra and Mahanty 2018).Multiple crucial parameters such as the convenience of farmers, distance from nearby villages to the procurement centres and central warehouses, availability of storage and transportation infrastructure, heterogeneous capacitated vehicle availability and capacity of central warehouses are not fully integrated while locating procurement centres(Reddy et al 2017).Moreover, various other costs such as fixed cost of heterogeneous capacitated vehicles, operational cost and carbon emission cost need to be considered along with the variable transportation cost and infrastructure cost(Mogale et al 2017b). The determination of an optimal number of procurement centres and their locations considering the parameters mentioned above are critical for increasing food grain procurement in India.…”

Reconfiguration of food grain supply network amidst COVID-19 outbreak: an emerging economy perspective

“…The post-harvest losses are significant due to ineffective policies and resource utilization (Parfitt et al, 2010). Several researchers pointed out gaps in the food grain supply chain, like unscientific procurement processes, inadequate storage facilities, improper planning coordination decisions, leakage, and irregular distribution of food grains (Balaji et al, 2016;Maiyar & Thakkar, 2020;Sazzad, 2014;Singha Mahapatra & Mahanty, 2018). National Commission on farmers in India ( 2004) argued that every village should have at least one procurement center within a 5 km radius; however, most farmers have to travel approximately 30 km to reach the nearest procurement center.…”

Modelling of sustainable food grain supply chain distribution system: a bi-objective approach

“…Due to the mismatch between the supply and demand of particular states, food grain has to be transferred from producing (surplus) states to consuming (deficit) states (Maiyar and Thakkar 2017;Mogale et al 2017;Mahapatra and Mahanty 2018;Balani et al 2013). The major wheat producing and consuming states in India are situated in a large geographically dispersed area which results in more fuel consumption for food grain transportation (Reddy et al 2017;Anoop et al 2018, High level committee report (HLC) 2015).…”