After the rural job guarantee programme, the government is now focusing on an ambitious National Food Security Act aimed at drawing more people into the food security net. It has made a strong pitch for providing 35 kg of cereal at Rs 3 per kg every month to the poor of this country.
The government is earnest to fulfill the party’s poll promise of enacting such a law, and has even provided the broad outlines of the proposed legislation. The rural job scheme and the information Act were conceived and piloted by the National Advisory Council (NAC).The Draft Right to Food (Guarantee of Safety and Security) Act enshrines freedom from hunger and malnutrition as a fundamental right.
It “provides for and asserts the physical, economic and social right of all citizens to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with an adequate diet necessary to lead an active and healthy life with dignity”.
The Union Cabinet has approved the Draft National Food Security Bill. It seeks to provide subsidized food grains to over half of India’s 1.2 billion population. The bill was presented to parliament and has been referred to standing committee.
Highlights of the Bill:
a. The food security bill promises 75 percent of rural population and 50 percent of urban households, the right to 7 kg food grains per person, at Rs.3 per kg for rice, Rs.2 per kg for wheat and Rs.1 per kg for coarse grains to the priority beneficiaries.
b. The general category will be provided at least three kilograms of food grains per person per month at half the minimum selling price.
c. The bill will also provide rations or cooked meals to children under 14 years of age, destitute including women and persons on the margins of society.
d. The bill provides for cost-sharing to pacify the states, which will implement the law. The states have also objected over the authority to decide on the criteria to identify the beneficiaries.
e. A three-tier grievance redressal mechanism at district, state and national level is also part of the legislation.
f. The Bill provides for women above 18 years to be considered the head of the beneficiary household for purpose of issue of ration cards. There shall be social audit of the functioning of ration shops.
g. The entitlements would cost the government about Rs. 94,973 crore per annum, as against the existing food subsidy bill estimated at Rs. 67,310 crore. The food grains required to be procured to meet the obligations under the Bill is estimated at about 65 million tonnes, up from the average 50 to 55 million tonnes at present.
The Government had expressed concern that food subsidy, currently at Rs.63, 000 crore ($12 billion), may go up to Rs.1.2 lakh crore ($ 23 billion) if the bill is implemented. Rising fertilizer prices and the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of the grains was another concern.
Managing the finances would not be a problem but procurement would have to be improved. It is estimated that against the current procurement levels of 54 millions tons, the requirement may go up to 62 million tons.
Benefit for Women and Children:
About 2.25 crore pregnant women and lactating mothers are expected to benefit from the legislation that proposes to give Rs. 1,000 per month for six months as maternity benefit. Maternity benefits that are available only in 52 districts will be extended across the country. All this is commendable but there is need for caution since the economy is showing signs of sluggishness.
The budget deficit will need to be watched. Finding the money to fund the ambitious scheme would also be no mean task. With procurement of food grains required to rise from the current 54 million tons to 62 million tons, the Union government would be up against a major challenge especially in years of drought.
Aiming to empower women, the Bill also proposes that the ration card will be issued to the eldest female member of the family. The proposed Bill also holds great promises for children. Children in the lower and upper primary classes would be entitled to mid-day meals as per the prescribed nutritional norms.
The union budget for 2011-12 had provided for Rs 55,586 crore for food subsidy. But while revised estimates are that the food subsidy bill this year will be around Rs. 63,000 crore, the new law would require more food grains and a lot more money to implement.
Fears have been expressed that the new Bill, as and when enacted, will fuel both shortages and inflation. The fears are not misplaced because in August this year, the food grain stock with the government was 61.27 million tons, short of what will be required to implement the scheme.
The annual procurement of food grains by the government stands at 54 million tonnes and will have to be raised to at least 62 million tons, if the scheme is to be implemented.
Implementation:
The draft law explains ways to implement the scheme and prescribes penalties for flawed delivery. While the state has to ensure uninterrupted supply of food-grain through the Public Distribution System (PDS), vigil on distribution will be through quarterly meetings between shop owners and representatives of local bodies who will be involved in the selection of the shop owner.
States will have to fully computerise their PDS within two years of the law and they “shall provide a toll-free number and a website where consumers can register their complaints. All complaints shall be addressed within 39 days of receipt and records of the same shall be made available in the public domain, including the Internet,” says the draft.
A commissioner will be appointed in each state to monitor the scheme, suggest changes in it, investigate scarcities, and award penalties to public servants for failures. The penalties could be a fine of gross salary of one month up to five years for negligence, or imprisonment of six months to five years in case of “deaths or serious morbidity”.
The Manmohan Singh government is to earmark over Rs 50,000 crore for the right to food programme. Though details of the programme’s rollout are yet to be firmed up, the government does not foresee any major hurdles in implementing the scheme. Government sources say the Bill could come up during the winter session of Parliament.
Keeping in mind substantial layoffs in select sectors, in the wake of the global economic crisis, the government is expected to expand the scope of the programme to include sectors such as textiles as well as large sections of agricultural labour impacted by volatilities in the food sector.
Under the public distribution system, the BPL category excludes large sections of the poor, including 52% of agricultural labour households. At present, food stocks with the government are upward of 50 million tonnes, more than twice the storage capacity of the Food Corporation of India, on the back of high rice procurement (30.65 million tonnes) and a record wheat buy (over 24.7 million tonnes).
The need for subsidised food-grain for a wider section of people is also reflected in increased off-take. While the off-take in the Antyodaya system is around 90%, showing people’s desperate need for cheap food-grain, the off-take for BPL families increased from 7.367 million tonnes to 22.845 million tonnes in 2005-06, out of an allocation of 27.32 million tonnes.
As far as above the poverty line (APL) families is concerned, the off-take is much lower, not because people do not need the grain but because for several years there was not much difference in the APL price and the market price.
For the first time, the onus of identification and, more crucially, delivery of grain to consumers could be pinned on panchayats in rural areas and local governments in urban areas, entailing never-before accountability on records of allocation and off-take of grain.
A seamless marriage of current realities and provisions in the proposed legislation would also mean smoothing out existing wrinkles in food-grain availability and accessibility.
Key Issues:
There are three essential components of this proposal that need to be fleshed out. And these revolve around the issues of what and how much to give, at what prices and to whom.
a. There is less ambiguity on the first issue of what and how much. The present entitlement for the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) is 35kg of food-grains per poor household. The Congress party manifesto, however, promises only 25kg per month, way below the minimum nutritional norms. Secondly, the present BPL (below poverty line) or AAY entitlements are only for food-grains (rice and wheat) and do not provide for any other nutritional requirements such as pulses, an essential source of protein. For a nutritionally secure strategy, it is imperative that a minimum 5kg of pulses be added to the basket.
b. The second key issue is at what price. While the manifesto of the Congress party promises rice or wheat at Rs3 per kg, this is no better than the existing entitlement of the AAY. It is, in fact, higher than existing price of food-grains available to the BPL population in as many as eight major states of the country-Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. These states account for 35% of the rural population. With Madhya Pradesh promising to follow suit, at least 40% of the rural population already enjoys food at Rs 3 per kg or less.
c. However, the third issue is the most crucial, which it is the number of beneficiaries that will be covered by the proposed food security Act. The promise made by the Congress party in its manifesto limits the entitlement to only BPL families. It is here that there is a lack of consensus between the states and the Union government. Going by the present methodology, the government estimates that 65 million households are BPL households and makes the food-grain allocations to states based on this. This number may go down to less than 60 million if the 2004-05 estimates from the Planning Commission are taken as the basis instead of the 1993-94 poverty figures that form the basis of the current estimates.
Against this, the total number of households that have been issued either a BPL or AAY card by state governments is 106.7 million. The state governments are currently doing this by providing additional subsidies from their own budgets.
In Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, for instance, it is almost universal, with around 80% of the population covered under the subsidized food scheme. Any attempt to restrict the number of beneficiaries to the present official poverty estimates (which are known to be flawed) will, therefore, lead to a reduction in the number of beneficiaries to almost half the existing number. Further, an Act should at least guarantee as much as is already being given.
While the estimate of poverty is one issue of contention, how to identify the beneficiaries for effective targeting is also unresolved. The problems with both these are well known and have been officially acknowledged with two expert committees working on resolving these.
The first committee headed by Suresh Tendulkar has been set up to examine the issue of estimation of poverty used by the Planning Commission and the second led by N.C. Saxena has been set up by the ministry of rural development to identify a suitable procedure for identification of BPL households. Both these committees are due to submit their report.
Providing subsidized grains is only one aspect of a food security Act. Such an Act should also address other issues such as malnutrition, especially among children and women, and social vulnerabilities due to barriers of age, caste, gender and disability.
Existing schemes such as the Mid-Day Meal Scheme or the Anganwadi programme for children under six, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating mothers should also be brought into the ambit of the Act xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 576 512">
