The list of PDS beneficiaries has not been updated for over five years and excludes many children and women NEW DELHI : It’s well past lunch hour, but 50-year-old Bitaiya is yet to step into her kitchen.
Her meagre supply of wheat flour was scraped clean the night before. So, whether she—a daily wage earner whose husband died of tuberculosis a few years ago—and her two children, seven- and 16-year olds, will have anything to eat today will depend on the generosity of her neighbours. “There is no work; so, there is no food," Bitaiya said over phone from her house at the Kuchbandhiya Dera village in Banda district of Uttar Pradesh.