Second Tranche Of Corona Stimulus Announced

The second tranche of the economic stimulus package worth  ?3,500 crore announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will be spent on providingfree foodgrains for the next two months to migrant workers who do not have ration cards. The move to provide free foodgrain for migrant workers is an extension of the Pradhan Mantri Gharib Kalyan Yojana, which provided an additional monthly free rice or wheat allocation of 5 kg per person, and 1 kg of pulse per household from April to June to the 80 crore people with ration cards covered by the National Food Security Act (NFSA). There will also be an extension of credit facilities for urban housing, street vendors and farmers and an interest subvention scheme for small businesses. The Finance Minister added that by August 2020, the ration card portability scheme will allow 67 crore NFSA beneficiaries in 23 connected states to use their cards at any ration shop anywhere in the country. The scheme would cover all beneficiaries by March 2021. However, economists said this intervention was too little, too late, and that the free foodgrain provision should have been universalised to deal with widespread distress. In fact, the One Nation One Ration Card scheme was originally supposed to cover all States by June 2020. “The need of the moment was to universalise the Public Distribution System to provide food to whoever needed it, especially since the grains are available in the Centre’s godowns,” said Prof. Jayati Ghosh, Chair, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University.