Every morning, a sea of migrants assemble for work at the Panjagutta labour adda in Hyderabad / Photograph by Soham Jain
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Hunger Haunts Migrants in Telangana: Portable Ration Remains a Distant Dream
Four years after the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ scheme piloted in Telangana, logistic and technological challenges riddle the Public Distribution System. An on-ground assessment shows the scheme has been a lost opportunity against heightened migrant food insecurity in the state.
Ashwita P.
Shahnaz Nani of India Labour Line counsels migrant workers at a labour adda in Hyderabad / Photograph by Ashwita P.
The road passing by Hanuman Devalayam temple at Tolichowki junction is sticky with a carpet of oil, tar and gum. It is around 10:40 AM. A growing crowd of sweaty, errant men is gathering around a woman wrapped in a scarf. Shahnaz Nani, a mobiliser for a national helpline for migrant workers, advises them earnestly, "You must not give up your stolen wages. You have the legal right to pursue action against fraudulent employers."
As it gets hotter, the workers scamper to keep up with the moving shadow of the flyover. Most arrived at dawn carrying plastic and canvas bags with a change of clothes and, rarely, some food. Some carry wooden floats, paintbrushes and hammers.
A large portion of the state's migrant population works in construction sites, brick kilns, and other service industries such as hospitality, security, transportation, housekeeping and beauty salons.
As per estimates by NGOs, there are more than 200 labour addas in Hyderabad. According to a 2021 research paper published in the Journal of Science and Economic Development, migrants constituted 67% of the total population of Hyderabad.
At the Tolichowki adda, Mohammed Hedha Ali, 26, a construction worker from Dumka district in Jharkhand, gestures absent-mindedly towards MD Lines, a nearby residential locality where he shares a single room with four other migrants. "If I don’t find work by 11 AM, I’ll return to my room. On those days I’ll only eat again at night," he says.
“Food security is not just about addressing the physical feeling of hunger but economic, social and physical access to nutritious diets required for a healthy life.”
Like Ali, many migrants in the city cannot count on their next meal. Food insecurity is rampant in the country. In 2022, the Global Food Security Index, released by the Economist Impact, placed India at the 68th position in a list of 113 countries.
Migrant Hunger Points Towards a Larger Crisis
Dipa Sinha, a national ‘Right to Food’ activist who has worked extensively in food, nutrition and public health, says that food insecurity has worsened after Covid. "Food security is not just about addressing the physical feeling of hunger but economic, social and physical access to nutritious diets required for a healthy life,” she states.
Krishna Relli is a mason from Andhra Pradesh and offers his services at a labour adda in Hyderabad. Discoloured hair and pale nails, indicators of undernourishment, are common among migrant workers lined at these addas / Photograph by Soham Jain
Sinha points out that most Indians consume inadequate diets, which are cereal heavy. They cannot afford a healthy diet at their current wages and prices.
Food insecurity is only part of a larger problem.
Anant Maringanti of Hyderabad Urban Labs, an independent think-tank, explains, “We should think about migrants in terms of their contracts of work, by the essential parameters of food, shelter and salary. When the lockdown hit, migrants who were insecure by all three indicators were the first ones to start walking home.”
Rough estimates by civil society groups suggest that more than 60,000 marginal migrant workers cater to the informal workforce of Hyderabad. However, a survey published by the Telangana Labour Department on their website reports only 58,522 migrant workers in unorganised sectors in the entire state.
Urgent Need for Migrant Data
The gap in migrant data highlights the lack of registration of informal migrant workers by the state, thereby denying them access to essential resources, including food.
Back at Tolichowki, Shanaz Nani notes down the grievances of migrants along with the phone numbers of their contractors.
Amidst the commotion, Jahir Ansari, an eager-looking worker from Rajasthan, pushes his way to the front of the crowd with a laminated yellow identity card and asks Nani, “Is this a shramik card? The sahib who had this made for me told me it is.”
Jahir holds a labour card issued by his home state. On the other hand, the ‘shramik’ or ‘e-shram card’ is granted by the Centre. It allows migrants like Jahir to register as informal workers on the e-shram portal, a national database of unorganised workers.
It is valid throughout the country, and migrant workers will no longer require proof of local address to avail ration in the state of their employment.
The e-shram portal is one of the many initiatives started by the central government in 2021 in response to the Supreme Court directive that food be provided to migrants even as they may not have a ration card.
What is National Ration Portability?
Introduced in 1997, the Targeted Public Distribution System or TPDS is part of India’s food security system that the central and state governments jointly operate.
Historically, the TPDS under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 restricted subsidised food distribution to ration shops where beneficiaries resided, thereby excluding millions of seasonal and cyclical migrant beneficiaries who kept moving throughout the country.
In 2019, the government announced the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ or the ONORC scheme that would allow national portability of ration cards.
This means ration card holders can avail of allocated food grains from any Fair Price Shop or FPS in the country.
An e-POS enabled ration shop in Amberpet in Hyderabad / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Migrant beneficiaries can avail of ration by using their fingerprints or iris identification on electronic-Point of Service or e-POS machines in fair price shops across India without producing a physical ration card.
In 2019, ONORC was piloted in Telangana, but four years later, the state has meagre primary data to measure its implementation and impact.
Read the in-depth interview of K. Thirumal Reddy, Chairman of the Telangana State Food Commission
For the past year, Telangana ONORC data has recorded 6259 inter-state ration transactions, with Hyderabad claiming a mere 1,177 of them.
Migrants: Outside the System, Looking In
Rangamma NR, 52, and Lakshmana NR, 56, are an elderly couple who migrated from Rayavara village in Karnataka 30 years ago. An ex-lorry driver, Lakshmana is now out of work following a stroke eight years ago. They have been unable to access their allocated ration from the city for three decades.
He explains their concerns, “We never got our ration card transferred because there is more risk of our names getting struck from the village list and then never being transferred to the city list." "Without it, we both cannot even claim pension," laments Rangamma. They are not aware of ration card portability.
Despite multiple health issues, Rangamma works odd jobs in nearby houses to survive. For migrants like the couple, there are a few informal ways to avail of food grains.
A migrant woman boils rice on firewood outside her tarpouline shelter near Gulmohar Circle in Hyderabad. As per many migrants in the city, lack of cooking facilities discourages them from picking ration / Photograph by Meenakshi B.
Rangamma's neighbour in the Ramanthapur migrant colony, Kumari Anju, 24, migrated from Vaishali district in Bihar after marriage. She lives in a 7ft x 8ft room covered by an asbestos sheet. Perched on a few thermocol sheets on the floor that alternate as a sitting and sleeping space, she speaks of her troubles, “During the lockdown, the ration shop owner refused to sell us grains 2-3 times. Now, we buy PDS rice in black at Rs 10 per kilo from a lady in our neighbourhood.”
“Three months back, our health worsened. I would have fainting spells while working around the house, and the Anganwadi workers said my son was under-weight.”
Her husband and minor brother work at a book-binding factory nearby to make ends meet. Anju and her three-year-old son are iron deficient. She recounts, “Three months back, our health worsened. I would have fainting spells while working around the house, and the Anganwadi workers said my son was under-weight.”
Several migrant families in the area said that ration card portability would be beneficial but were unaware of any such scheme already in place.
Ration Shops not Migrant-Friendly
In Hyderabad, ration shop owners like Sakinam Srinivas (FP Shop No: 1677813) and Saritha M. (FP Shop No: 1677728) say no migrant beneficiaries have been allocated to their shops. “One of the reasons is that their details cannot be verified. Our shops also have only enough storage to supply grains to people on the list,” informs Srinivas, waving a book with a state-supplied list of local beneficiaries.
Hyderabad-based independent social activist SQ Masood has worked extensively on issues related to ration card registration in Telangana. “FPS owners must be sensitised first to the ration needs of migrants,” he says. “They must also be equipped with the data and sufficient quotas to fulfil these needs. Migrants, on the other hand, should be made more aware of their rights.”
In Telangana, government officials say that FP shops are unpopular among migrants because the Centre does not allocate grains suited to their dietary habits.
FP shop owner Saritha M of Shop No: 1677728 in Hyderabad has not been allocated migrant beneficiaries by the state / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Ashish Ranjan, a ‘Right to Food’ campaign activist from Bihar, explains, “Migrants from Bihar prefer parboiled rice or wheat. But PDS allocation to any state is based on local purchase.”
Ranjan maintains that allocation requirements of migrants can be achieved through inter-state cooperation. But this will require an extra layer of logistics that might also directly affect procurement, thus demanding interventions from the Centre.
Receiving states that provide additional food subsidies to their own residents may also be hesitant to share it with migrants from other states. Telangana’s ONORC sales data reflect zero sales of PDS grains to Bihari migrants last year.
Hyderabad has lakhs of Bihari migrants working in the informal sector.
Explaining the slow uptake of ONORC in the state, Aditya Manapuram, a Fair Price Shop Inspector of the Civil Supplies Department, says, “There are many limitations to beneficiaries availing the scheme. One reason is that most migrants work for daily wages and their work hours coincide with the time that ration is distributed.”
Murali Akunuri, an ex-IAS officer turned convener of the Social Democratic Forum in Telangana, is candid about his disdain for the individualised and authoritarian policies of the state. “Migrants do not feature in the receiving state’s electoral roll. Why would they be concerned for their welfare?” he asks.
Business as usual, as workers wait to be hired for contract jobs, under the Tolichowki flyover in Hyderabad. Most workers arrive at 6 AM and leave at 11 AM if they are not hired / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Migrant workers drink tea as they wait to be hired or contracted. For many daily wage workers, there are no more meals till lunch time / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Bags belonging to migrants; some contain a change of clothes, tools and food / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Workers flock around an employer (on the bike) who will hire them for one or more odd jobs during the day. After much haggling, the wages are fixed / Photograph by Ashwita P.
In some cases, migrants are paid lower than the minimum wages stipulated by the state government. When a worker is hired, they are taken by the employer to their place of work / Photograph by Ashwita P.
Logistic and Technological Challenges Abound
More instances reflect the state and Centre’s lack of preparation to accommodate migrants under NFSA.
In April 2022, an independent report by Dalberg, a global data analysis and policy consulting firm, measured the uptake and effectiveness of the ONORC scheme in India. It revealed that the challenges lay primarily in implementation failures.
According to the study, unsuccessful Aadhar linking with ration cards is rampant. Another significant deterrent is e-POS machine failure. Saritha M, the FP shop dealer in Ameerpet, explains, “It is usually elderly beneficiaries who face problems with iris or fingerprint authentication. The e-POS machines were supplied to us in 2014.”
According to experts, another challenge that has put significant pressure on migrants has been the widespread cancellation of ration cards without due procedure and efficient redressal mechanisms.
Laxman Lal, 27, is a wedding stage installer who migrated from Madhepura district in Bihar to Hyderabad. “Last year, our ration card got cancelled all of a sudden. I had to run in circles for two months, but as our condition became very desperate, I had to come back to work here,” he says.
His ration card was cancelled as part of a ‘de-duplication’ process. This resulted from the central ration card data digitisation that started in 2013. The purpose was to weed out duplicate and ghost beneficiaries.
“The PDS digitisation model used an undisclosed de-duplication algorithm to identify ‘bogus cards’. The omission errors disproportionately affected worthy beneficiaries, including migrants.”
Back home, without a ration card, Laxman Lal’s wife and two young children depend on his modest earnings to survive.
In 2019, the Centre announced that no new ration cards would be issued until a national-level ‘de-duplication’ was carried out. States were also required to share their ration data to be aggregated into a digitised national database.
In 2020, Masood filed a PIL against Telangana state for the wrongful deletion of about 17.6 lakh ration cards. “The PDS digitisation model used an undisclosed de-duplication algorithm to identify ‘bogus cards’ instead of verification through field surveys,” he explains. “The omission errors disproportionately affected worthy beneficiaries, including migrants.”
While the de-duplication process is ongoing, states have had to restart new registrations of ration cards on SC's instructions. In the past year, the algorithm deleted almost three lakh ration cards from the central database against only 50,289 new registrations. ONORC does not provide the authority to states to identify non-local beneficiaries and set down estimated quantities of ration required for them.
Padmaja G., Deputy Commissioner Civil Supplies Department, states, “The central repository maintains national migration data which is not shared with us. We cannot conduct on-field identification and documentation of migrants due to many practical concerns.”
NFSA Reforms are in Order
According to the Dalberg report, other challenges were: low linking of Aadhar due to the technological illiteracy of migrants, price and quality variation of PDS ration between states, inadequate allocation to FP shops and low awareness of the scheme among beneficiaries.
A seven state comparison graph of inter-state ration transactions (migrants picking ration at other than home state) for one year (April 22' to April 23'). In this graph, ration sales under ONORC are the highest in Delhi and the lowest in Telangana. The scheme is picking up at a comparatively slow pace in Telangana, Kerala and Karnataka / Data from the Integrated Management of Public Distribution System website by National Informatics Centre. Flourish graph by Ashwita P.
Masood says, “The ONORC scheme calls for the NFSA to be reformed. We have been demanding universal PDS, so that ration cards can be done away with completely.”
Time and again, food rights activists across the country have highlighted the shortcomings of the existing system that makes it mandatory for the poor of the country to procure ration cards.
Activist Dipa Sinha elaborates, “For those who are excluded from NFSA itself, portability is of no use. The coverage has to be increased first, to match increased population over the years and also towards near universalisation to ensure no exclusions.”
Through universal PDS, subsidised grains are allocated to both Above Poverty Line and Below Poverty Line PDS beneficiaries. The prices are to be fixed by the respective states. This will eliminate their food insecurity risk to a large extent, ensuring coverage for the most vulnerable groups, including migrants.
Read the in-depth interview of K. Thirumal Reddy, Chairman of the Telangana State Food Commission
Activist Ashish Ranjan is assured about the efficacy of universal PDS. He says, “The huge quantity of grains moved through Bihar state during the pandemic showed that the state and centre are well equipped in terms of logistics and handling.” During the pandemic, the Centre distributed ten kgs of grains over and above the NFSA allocation.
Given that 80% of Bihar's population can avail of ration through NFSA, Ranjan maintains that 100% coverage is not a far-fetched goal. This will also help all segments of society to be invested in the scheme as well as reduce corruption and PDS leakage to a large extent.
Some More Food Security Challenges
Bhasker Goswami, a Food Security Program Specialist at Food and Agricultural Organisation, Delhi, points out that during the last five years, about 90,000 hectares of agricultural land in and around Hyderabad have been diverted towards non-agricultural purposes.
He warns that unless government policy and legislation take appropriate measures to counter the diversion of valuable land and water resources, it will have severe implications for the food security status of the state.
National ration portability through the ‘One Nation One Ration Card’ could be just the opportunity to completely reform the country’s food security system and address the shortcomings of Targeted PDS.
The central and state governments need to exhibit political will and do more than roll out ambitious schemes warranting additional layers of administrative coordination.
An equitable food allocation and distribution system that addresses the diverse needs of vulnerable groups like migrants will require the rethinking of food poverty and hunger itself. In its absence, hunger will continue to haunt millions in the country.
An e-POS Machine Demonstration
epos final.mp4A dummy transaction on an e-POS machine is demonstrated by T. Shravan, Project Coordinator, Civil Supplies Department, Telangana. After the ration shop ID is entered into the machine., the names of the FP shop dealer and nominees of each ration card are displayed. On clicking 'Scan FP shop' button, the machine requests biometric data of beneficiary in order to allow a ration transaction. The quantity of grains that are withdrawn is updated against each household as digitised ration card data. This is possible through an Aadhar-linked ration card / Video by Ashwita P.
This article was published on 26 April, 2023.
Ashwita P. is an architect-journalist, who is trying to negotiate between the here, there and everywhere of life through her stories and drawings. She is not opposed to human contact, so reach out! @ashwita_panicker
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