Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution (India)

The Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution is a government ministry of India. The Ministry is headed by a minister of Cabinet rank. The current minister is Sharad Pawar.

The ministry is divided into two departments, the Department of Food and Public Distribution and the Department of Consumer Affairs .

Department of Food and Public Distribution

The Department of Public Distribution is charged with management of the food economy of the country.

The objectives of the Department are to ensure.

• Remunerative rates for our farmers
• The supply of food grains at reasonable prices to the consumers through the public distribution system

Public Distribution System

The Indian Public Distribution System (PDS) is a national food security system that distributed subsidized food to India's poor. Major commodities distributed include wheat, rice, sugar, and kerosene. Surpluses of food from increased crop yields (as a result of the Green Revolution and good monsoon seasons) are managed by the Food Corporation of India, established by the Food Corporation Act 1964, implements national policy for farm price support, operations, procurement, storage, preservation, inter-state movement and distribution operations. PDS has a network of about 478,000 Fair Price Shops (FPS), perhaps the largest distribution network of its type in the world, operated by the Union Government and state governments.

Department of Consumer Affairs

The Department of Consumer affairs administers the policies for Consumer Cooperatives, Monitoring Prices, availability of essential commodities, Consumer Movement in the country and Controlling of statutory bodies like Bureau of Indian Standards(BIS) and Weights and Measures.

• Standards of Weights and Measures
• The Bureau of Indian Standards
• Consumer Cooperatives
• Forward Markets Commission, Mumbai.
• Monitoring of Prices and Availability of essential commodities
• The Consumer Protection Act, 1986
• Consumer Welfare Fund

The department of that are considered essential,regulates the availability and takes measures thereof along with prescribing measures to see that the whole system works towards the food security of vulnerable a lot of motivation,provided waves of zeal to owners of shops to make them into mini mall type structures that could perforce supply the maximum choice of goods&services to population to be reached including beneficiaries in their allotted areas.This has also given them more of dignity,accountability,visibility, positive orientation and changed mind set to do well,improve upon their perceived image as one who indulged in diversion,pilferage or leakages that rocked from within, just for his own ends only. This precisely had been the guiding factor to go for a systemic change in the scope of activity &goods handling,that has been liked by other states and also drawn the attention of a set of young MPs who had been given a presentation on the same. Even the Minister in charge Mr Sharad Pawar was much impressed with this new approach and outlook for a change in the system since it was out of box thinking and this impressed him to tell other states to copy or study it for replication.

Organizations

The Public Sector Undertaking (PSU)s under the administrative control of Dept. of Public Distribution are:

• Food Corporation of India (FCI)
• Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC)

References

Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution