why not National Food Secuirty Bill ? -------------------------------------------- The National Food Security Bill serves only to register the fact that hunger is a real cause for concern, as in its present form, the bill is not adequately endowed with a vision to address the structural causes of India’s food and nutritional insecurities. Three basic issues need to be highlighted. First, the bill dwells on targeting vis-à-vis universalisation, re-invoking the contentious BPL-APL issue (‘priority’ and ‘non-priority’ households). Intended benefits will be provided to people based on these categories. It is a well-known fact that successive governments have failed to identify the poor. As a result, a large part of the country’s population continues to struggle with hunger in various forms. In such a grim scenario, the government should be talking about universalisation, which is an integral part of the fundamental right to life. Second, the bill provides for the supply of 7 kg of subsidised foodgrain per person per month to ‘priority’ households, whereas a person needs 14 kg a month to fulfil her basic food requirements. Third, the proposed entitlements do not deal with the problem of nutritional insecurity. People in India suffer undernourishment mainly due to protein and fat deficiencies. To cope with this problem, the government should have included pulses (to compensate for protein) and edible oil (to replenish fat). The preamble of the bill says: “…the Supreme Court of India has recognised the right to food and nutrition as integral to the right to life…” Although our country is being run by economists, they sound helpless and ill-informed. Has anyone from the Planning Commission, PMO or RBI ever said publicly that the government doled out almost Rs 6.22 lakh crore as tax revenue subsidy in the financial year 2011-12? This is registered as taxes foregone, and accounts for 65% of the government’s total revenue. Last year, the figure was Rs 5.36 lakh crore. A total of Rs 23 lakh crore in six years has been stashed away in the corporate world’s coffers. No one has questioned this. Meanwhile, the agriculture subsidy has been converted into direct loans to farmers; petrol has been handed over to the market; public expenditure on basic services like health, education and access to clean water is dropping. Why the hue and cry about NFSA expenditure? We are already spending Rs 67,310 crore on food subsidies; there will be an increase of only another Rs 30,000 crore (a mere 4% of taxes being usurped by the corporate-economist-government nexus). And what will that do? It will restore the dignity of the people of India. It will help feed the 77 crore people sleeping hungry. The Government of India will only be giving a subsidy of Rs 1,188 per person per year, or Rs 3.25 a day. And still we have ministers, economists, policymakers and consultants who are unhappy with the idea! This is the outcome of welfare politics which has become imperative in the last decade or so. We have been running the Integrated Child Development Services programme with a plan to spend Rs 80,000 crore in the next five years; the midday meal scheme is already in place. We have a 17 crore under-6 child population, 45% of which is undernourished. But we barely spend Rs 1.62 per child per day on their growth and nutrition. The fact of the matter is that the private food market will lose out on profits due to this legislation, and there will be a control over inflation. The market finds this unacceptable. Take the example of the second and third quarter of 2011-12. While the growth rate came down to 6.8%, food inflation also declined from 16% to 1.7%.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 16:33:36 +0000