An evaluation by the Planning Commission in 2004 revealed that ‘In 2003–04, 16 states were issued 14.07 metric tonnes of food grain of which only 5.93 metric tonnes reached BPL families’.7 Nobody quite knew what happened to the rest. A Planning Commission Study, in 2005 said that ‘about 58 per cent of the subsidised food grains issued from the Central Pool do not reach the BPL families because of identification errors, non-transparent operation and unethical practices’ in what was designed as the Targeted Public Distribution System.8 Indeed, in 2008, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of
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