I did read. Oxfam report isnt a trustworthy report
in one word. It cites the example of Tamil Nadu PDS. You might not know but TN was the first state in the country to bring in Universal PDS. Do you know what it means? To everyone. Rich and poor alike. My family still buys sugar from PDS center. There has not been a single hunger death in TN like for a long time.
India's Supreme Court has repeatedly asked centre govt and other states why TN model cannot be implemented as we have a lots of food grains which gets wasted. It's only in last few years other states are implementing the same. Chattisgarh which is a tribal state with poor people now has India's best PDS system.
Now other states and central govt don't want subsidised food to reach rich and middle.class people to save money. So they are giving only to poor people. The problem comes from corruption now when genuine poor people hasn't been added in states like UP,.WB and Bihar thereby denying their food.rights. Their rations were gobbled up by corrupt officials or good to do people who fake their income, get free rice and then sell it to poor people to make money. It's also a political issue on a local level. Caste also plays a role.
Another issue when a migrant moves to another part or state, he cannot get PDS from the host state anymore. He can only be provided in his home address state. He can change the address to the new state and it's a bureaucratic process with delays as the host state now have to pay for the new migrants. So it takes their time.
Now all states are trying to implement universal system to feed everyone inspite of leakages. Another thing is this article talks from another media sources which means they haven't actually done any sampling or statistics on the ground itself. TN has leakages, but saying 1kg of rice out of 5 reaches the beneficiaries is pure BS. I know a lot of people who receives the benefits even though they are of middle class, my family being one.
There goes reliability
Time Inc. Network wrote a reply to an Oxfam study from January 2015
[87] on inequality stating that the richest 1% at the end of 2016 will own more than half of the world's assets. However, Time pointed out that the data were based on a study from Credit Suisse. In this study, The Global Wealth Databook 2015, personal assets were calculated in
net worth, meaning wealth would be negated by having any mortgages
On 28 April 2007 an Australian conservative
think tank, the
Institute of Public Affairs, lodged a complaint with the
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission accusing Oxfam of misleading or deceptive conduct under the
Trade Practices Act in its promotion of Fairtrade coffee.
[74] They claimed that high certification costs and low wages for workers undermine claims that Fairtrade helps to lift producers out of poverty. The complaint was subsequently dismissed by the Commission.
In October 2005, the magazine
New Internationalist described Oxfam as a "Big International Non-Government Organisation (BINGO)", having a corporate-style, undemocratic internal structure, and addressing the symptoms rather than the causes of international poverty – especially by acquiescing to
neoliberal economics and even taking over roles conventionally filled by national governments.
[65] Similar criticism came from
Red Pepper magazine in July 2005
[66] and Katherine Quarmby in the
New Statesman in May 2005.
[67] The latter article detailed growing rifts between Oxfam and other organisations within the
Make Poverty History movement.
In a 2011
Columbia Journalism Review article, journalist Karen Rothmyer accused NGOs in general and Oxfam in particular of being unduly influenced by the priorities of the media, of providing inaccurate information to the press ("stories featuring aid projects often rely on dubious numbers provided by the organisations") and of perpetuating negative stereotypes which "have the potential to influence policy". She drew on earlier work by journalist Lauren Gelfand, who had taken a year away from journalism to work for Oxfam; "A lot of what Oxfam does is to sustain Oxfam" and Linda Polman, author of the Crisis Caravan; "Aid organisations are businesses dressed up like Mother Theresa."
[68] In 2015, Omaar and de Waal, in
Food and Power in Sudan, commented, "the 1990s have seen growing pressure for humanitarian institutions to become more accountable. There has been a succession of reviews of major operations, growing in independence and criticism."
[69] They quote an
OECD report, "The Joint Evaluation of Emergency Operations in Rwanda", which stated that its team "came across examples of Agencies telling, if not falsehoods, then certainly half-truths" and noted "a remarkable lack of attempts by agencies to seek the views of beneficiaries on the assistance being provided".
[70]
Oxfam and others launched the
Sphere Project in response, an initiative which aims to "improve the quality of assistance provided to people affected by disasters", to "develop a set of minimum standards in core areas of humanitarian assistance" and to introduce an element of accountability which had previously been lacking.
I suggest you to take off the glasses given to you by bhakhtis or sanghis and start looking at facts. Unless you don't recognize and accept the problems, things won't change.
