GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

The Puritans would have also agreed with the reluctance to hand over cash, a reticence historically shared by the left and the right. In India, one of the more successful recent efforts by the left was the demand for a national food security act.

Distributing grains is complicated and costly. The government has to buy the grains, store them, and transport them, often across many hundreds of miles. In India, the estimate is that transport and storage add 30 percent to the cost of the program. Moreover, there is the challenge of making sure the intended recipient gets the grains at the intended price. In 2012, eligible households received only a third of the amount they were due under the Indonesian Raskin program, and paid 40 percent more than the official price.²²

In India, the government is now considering moving to what it calls direct benefit transfers, sending money to people’s bank accounts rather than giving them food (or other material benefits), on the grounds that it would be much cheaper and less subject to corruption. However, there is considerable opposition, led mostly by left-wing intellectuals. One of them interviewed twelve hundred households throughout India about their preferences for cash versus food. Overall two-thirds of the households preferred food transfers to cash. In states where the food distribution system worked well (mainly in South India), this preference was even stronger. When asked why, 13 percent of households mentioned transaction costs (the bank and market are far, so it’s hard to turn cash into food). But one-third of the households who prefer food argued that getting foodstuff protects them against the temptation to misuse cash. In Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, one respondent said, “Food is much safer. Money gets spent easily.” Another said, “Even if you give ten times the amount I will prefer the ration shop since the goods cannot be frittered away.”²³