THE FOOD SECURITY BILL, 2011: KEY PROVISIONS
Perhaps, no other Bill has been as successful as the National Food Security Bill, 2011(hereinafter ‘the Bill’) is, in spawning consensus and dissension alike. It’s been in the spotlight for good and bad reasons. The good reasons appear plain and comprehensible, unlike the bad reasons, which merit a detailed discussion. Before we embark on why the Bill may not fructify in serving the stated objectives, it shall in the fitness of things to fathom its key provisions.
The Bill, in its unaltered avatar, entitles up to seventy five per cent of the total rural population and fifty percent of the total urban population to food grains, as specified in its third schedule. Of these, forty six percent in the rural areas and twenty eight per cent in the urban areas shall be mandatorily drawn out of the priority groups to be identified in line with the recommendations of the Central Government.
The Bill provides priority households with seven kilograms of food grains per capita per month at prices not exceeding rupees three, two and one for rice, wheat and coarse grains in the order mentioned. On the flipside, general households will receive three kilograms of food grains per capita in a month at a price equivalent to or below the minimum support price of food grains, i.e., the price at which government procures.
The Bill sets out norms for procurement by the Government and distribution through the Targeted Public Distribution System. States shall discharge the onus of fortifying their civil supplies corporations by stocking them with adequate amount of food grains. Also, states shall comply with the obligation reforming the Targeted Public Distribution System and promote the usage of Aadhaar Cards for the purposes of identifying the Intended beneficiaries and digitize records to induce transparency into the Public Distribution System.
However, recent reports in national dailies evince the proclivity of the Government to ring in a few changes in the Bill. K.V Thomas, the incumbent food minister, sought to disambiguate the government’s plans in relation to the Bill in a recent jamboree with Live Mint, national news daily. Amplifying on the coverage of the Bill, he said the Bill would now blanket sixty seven per cent of the total population. He said it might be impracticable to cover ninety five of the population in thirteen states as avowed by the Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, Sonia Gandhi. He added that the total subsidy for food grains is upwards of a lakh crore rupees and that economic burden of the implementation of the Bill should be borne by the states, confirming the Government would discuss the issue of expenditure with states to forge a solution to this predicament. He opined India needs about three more million tons of food grains for a glitch-free implementation of the Bill. Vis-à-vis the cash transfer system, he said the ‘cash transfer system’ is to be introduced with prudence and only when almost ninety five per cent of the beneficiaries have bank accounts and there is end-to-end computerization.
FULFILLING THE AVOWED OBJECTIVES: AN IMPOSSIBILITY
Precisely, it’s submitted that the Bill cannot serve its avowed objectives because of three reasons: the lopsided basis to identify the poor, insufficient entitlements in it and the incessant dependence on the Public Distribution System.
A. The flawed basis to Identify the poor
Albeit named differently, households clubbed together as priority groups will predominantly be out of the Below Poverty Line Families. However, till date, no immaculate yardstick’s been evolved by the government to define poverty.
The Committees of Suresh Tendulkar in 2009, Y.K Alagh in 1977 and Lakdawala in1993 submitted reports on poverty observing a well-nigh similar basis. These Government Committees downsized the number of poor for obvious reasons whenever the premise of the calculating the estimates changed, meaning the government is oblivious to the real number of poor in India. A latest estimate by the Planning Commission that drew the poverty line for rural India at rupees 22.40 and 28.60 in urban areas invited humongous flak. It used shoe-string sums to gauge the number of poor, and found out that over 35 crore people India live in poverty.
However, the International estimates belie the governmental estimates of poverty. The Global Human Development Report of UNDP in 2011 put the number of poor in India at 61.2 crores. Reports by the World Bank (2010) and the Oxford and Human Development Initiative show that over 32.7 per cent of the population lives on less than $1.25 per day and that India houses over 410 million poor people. India stooped to 134th position, from 135th position on the Human Development Index, 2011.
The Government’s been making efforts to treat the malady of poverty in our country without knowing the number of poor with exactitude. The causative factor for this could be the lack of an infallible basis to define poverty. Thus, despite the fact the Bill covers 75 per cent of population, earmarking only 46 per cent as priority households is worrisome, putting a question mark over adequacy of the Bill to meet its objective of providing food and nutritional security to the poor of our country.
B. Insufficient entitlements in the Bill
Arguendo assuming that the government’s basis is infallible and rightly represents the number of poor in our country, the entitlements in the Bill do not suffice in tackling in providing an adequate cover of food and nutritional security. The Bill requires State Governments could only dole out about twenty five kilograms of food grains to a family with priority households at prices specified therein. The non-priority groups covered by the Bill receive even less; only four kilograms of food grains on paying the minimum support price. Although it’s gladdening to note that the Government’s is heading in the right direction, we may be downcast when we compare the entitlements in the Bill to those envisaged by the Supreme Court of India. The Apex Court of our Country passed an order instructing governments to offer thirty five kilograms of food grains to a family at a subsidized rate.
The Apex Court’s mandate of accommodating every family below the poverty line with thirty five kilograms of food grains at subsidized rates is apparently given a go-by. Not all receive entitlements tantamount to thirty five kilo grams. Classifying people into two different pigeonholes with a lopsided justification in utter disregard of the order of the Apex Court is slightly unsettling. Thus, it is suggested the Bill should into account the mandate of the Supreme Court that provides entitlements in line with those contemplated by the mandate of the Supreme Court.
An individual ideally requires about fourteen kilograms of food grains a month. People in India suffer from undernourishment primarily by reasons of fat and protein deficiencies. The Bill is mute on the Government’s duty to create room for the allotment of nutrition-rich food. To make good the deficiencies of fat and proteins, the Government ought to have included a mandatory provision to supply edible oils and pulses. In absentia a provision to provide nutritional security, the Government’s Bill contravenes its sacrosanct constitutional duty of raising nutritional standards amongst people.
Therefore, little can be said to rebut the fact that the current avatar of the Bill fails to adequate provide food and nutritional security to its intended beneficiaries. The entitlements it guarantees are proven inadequate by any yardstick.
C. The incessant independence on the Public Distribution System
In 2010, by April the stocks of rice and wheat produced in India were nearly 42 million tons, an almost adequate stock to feed below poverty families. In 2011, agriculture in India yielded results to satisfaction with huge stocks of rice and wheat. In 2012, India is expected to produce about 75 million metric tons of food grains by August. However, a grave shortage of storage facilities is a source of trouble. Meager storage facilities have been a problem with decades of history. This year, for instance, storage facilities could presently stock 63 million metric tons of grains, letting the excess of grains of about 12 million metric tons to rot.
A corrupt and under-performing Indian Public Distribution System multiplies India’s woes. The Wadhwa Committee appointed by the Supreme Court rightfully concluded that the Public Distribution System is corrupt and that it needs to be wholly reformed. Red tape in government procurement, creation of storage facilities, diversions of food grains in course of reaching the poor preclude them from receiving adequate quantities of food.
To redress this paradoxical situation, two things seem expedient. First is a simple creation of additional storage facilities, as budgetary concerns over the implementation shall continue to remain otherwise. The second is reforming the Targeted Public Distribution System, which’s been in place for decades. It continues to plague India ever since its inception. Although the Bill contemplates its reforms, prescribing norms for its modus operandi by allowing, for instance, the state governments to entrust the local panchayats the responsibility to oversee their functioning and setting up grievance redressal committees, slip-ups do exist. The government’s role does continue to dominate the procurement, storage and allotment of food grains. In this milieu, red-tapism and the lackadaisical attitude of the governmental authorities cannot be dispensed with, and the very purpose of the Bill may be upended.
WHAT COULD THE GOVERNMENT DO TO BRING ABOUT FOOD SECURITY ?
When the present version of the Food Security Bill, 2011 was put into the public domain, a bunch of economics experts made an open representation to the Indian National Advisory Council to try out a ‘minimum cash transfer system’ through an appropriate legislation. They reasoned that such bout of cash transfers to the intended beneficiaries is likely to get past the complex problem of corruption as it entails less intervention of the government.
Under such direct cash transfers, money used by the Government to subsidize food is allowed to percolate to the poor. Today, over fifty million Brazilians’ receive monthly cash transfers under the Bolsa familia Scheme. There is a law to commit the Brazilian Government to unconditionally transfer money to its citizens. In Africa, in the absence of proper infrastructure and ample bureaucratic corruption, the system of direct cash transfer had several benefits. Countries like Mexico and cities like have specific programmes for direct cash transfers. About five million households benefit from such programmes in Mexico.
Like other countries India, too, can go in for this system in view of similar bureaucratic hurdles and infrastructural concerns. In fact, the Government is launching an ambitious scheme for a direct electronic transfer of cash to beneficiaries to contain corruption and pilferage of subsidized items. The scheme would firstly cover scholarships, pensions, and unemployment allowances. Such a direct electronic transfer of cash to those covered under the Bill should be made possible as it could prove to be a solution to battle corruption and leakages in the Public Distribution System, as evidenced through the International practices. Since the transfer of cash would be electronic, not paper-based, the likelihood of corruption can be minimized. People would be at liberty to buy the necessary amounts of food, without having to wait for the helpings hands of the governmental authorities.
Many experts, sadly, have been denouncing a shift to any such system. They argue money may be misspent and it may not meet their requirements in case of a surge in inflation. They advocate entitlements with fixed amounts of food grains as a better system than the system of direct cash transfer. It’s submitted such arguments have no merit. While fixing the amount of cash to be transferred electronically would be a problem, it’s submitted it can be dealt with if the Government does evince interest in working it out. That apart, the creation of storage facilities concurrently can rein in inflation and is necessary to lower prices of food items as abundant quantity would result in less-priced food items, which are necessary to ensure that the amount being transferred is adequate to buy the bare minimum quantity of food items. As for the problem of unwise spending, it needs to be understood that a poor person with empty stomach is clever enough to set right his priorities. No poor person would long to be famished. He can never be unmindful of his necessities. His empty stomach would compel him to spend the money first on procuring food.
CONCLUSION
The Food Security Bill, 2011 is a law to salvage the poor from the clutches of hunger and problems stemming from it. It does do a little in the ameliorating the scenario of poor in India. However, such a law can never venture to be incomplete and continue to bank upon the age-old systems to tackle the morass of hunger.
It is submitted, the Bill is disheartening as it does not live to up to its name. The entitlements it warrants do not fulfill the requirements of a common man and contain nothing to offer nutritional security it promises. Combined with this, reliance on the Targeted Public Distribution System is a misadventure on Government’s part. Many surveys have buttressed the Himalayan level of corruption in it.
Time’s ripe to usher in monumental and never-before-seen changes. It’s submitted that India needs to take a leaf out of the practices in Africa and Brazil and experiment with a system to directly transfer cash, thereby putting the continued dominance of central and state governments at minimum.
In conclusion, it’s submitted that Central Government cannot conjure up a state of unbridled food security through the Food Security Bill, 2011. It ought to revamp the Bill by leaps and bounds to include provisions to offer nutritional security, invest in storage facilities and superintend the functioning of the Targeted Public Distribution System, which is highly herculean and fraught with risks. To obviate this, it must invest it’s time in experimenting with a new direct transfer cash system to get disencumbered and expand food storage facilities to tap the sufficient food grain production in India, and in process create, a hunger-free and nutrition-rich India.
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