Quietly and
effectively, a nationwide public campaign has built up over the past
couple of years to pressure the state to address nutritional
deficiencies among many groups of Indian citizens. There is much to yet
achieve, but using a number of techniques this loosely knit and
decentralised "Right to Food" campaign has already forced some changes
on the Central and State Governments. What is unusual is that this has
been entirely a citizens' effort, with mainstream political parties by
and large keeping away from a campaign which, if it maintains its
momentum, is likely to have a substantial impact on people's lives. The
political classes may have their eyes focussed on the business and
pravasi conclaves, but unbeknownst to them and without their involvement
something more important is happening in the public arena. The Right to
Food campaign has been the one serious attempt to deal with the obscene
phenomenon of overflowing godowns of food co-existing with chronic
under-nutrition in the country. In the late 1990s, more than half of
Indian women suffered from anaemia, more than 45 per cent of children
were malnourished and more than a third of newborn children suffered
from low birth weight. Yet, the huge public food stocks — which reached
a peak of 65 million tonnes in late 2001 and now stand at 55 million
tonnes — have not been used by the state for a frontal attack on
under-nutrition in the country. It is now being pushed by this campaign
to react.
A
series of events since 2001 has catalysed and given momentum to the
"Right to Food" campaign. In 2001, local groups in Rajasthan began
putting pressure on the State Government to use the Central stocks to
deal with the effects of the drought the previous year. In May 2001, the
People's Union for Civil Liberties filed what could turn out to be a
landmark public interest petition in the Supreme Court, drawing
attention to the accumulation of stocks. In April 2002, a nationwide day
of events was organised to demand implementation of the mid-day meal
scheme. In 2002, individual groups highlighted the occurrence of
starvation deaths in Orissa, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. These groups have
also organised "public hearings" to put pressure on local governments to
respond to starvation deaths, corruption in the public distribution
system (PDS) and the failure to implement welfare schemes. This
culminated earlier this month in a `national' hearing in Delhi where
citizens and representatives from non-governmental organisations in 12
States gathered to hear "voices of hunger" and draw up an agenda to take
public action further. The Right to Food campaign has been at least
partly responsible for getting the Centre to lower PDS prices in late
2001 and has been exerting pressure to expand the Antyodaya Anna Yojana,
the programme which supplies subsidised grain to the destitute and which
by all accounts has been, even for a government programme, reasonably
successful in most parts of the country. In the campaign are a number of
citizens' groups, many of whom are involved in other areas of work, who
share a common interest in making the state fulfil its constitutional
duties.
One
leg of the Right to Food campaign is in the new tradition of drawing
attention to the Constitution to make the Central and State Governments
accountable for their (lack of) action. There was the right to
information campaign, initially organised by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti
Sangathan of Rajasthan in the late 1990s, which resulted in legislative
action at the State and Central Government levels to make the
administration more transparent. Then there was the right to education
campaign, which led to the amendment to the Constitution to make
elementary education a fundamental right. And now we have the food
campaign. While the PUCL petition was based on a reading of Article 21
(the right to life), more recently the activists have focussed attention
on the directive principle contained in Article 47: "The State shall
regard the raising of the level of nutrition and the standard of living
of its people and the improvement of the public health among its primary
duties..."
Since 2001 the Supreme Court has issued a number of interim orders that
have prodded the Central and State Governments into action. The orders
have directed the State Governments to complete identification of the
beneficiaries of welfare programmes, improve implementation of food
schemes such as the AAY and employment programmes such as the Sampoorna
Grameen Rozgar Yojana and led to the appointment of commissioners to
monitor progress in executing the court's rulings. The most important
order came in November 2001 when the court directed the State Government
to implement a cooked mid-day meal scheme for primary school children.
This went further than the existing Central Government scheme (on paper
in many States) in which only grain was supplied to the States. The
follow-up by the State Governments has not been entirely satisfactory.
But there has been progress. Rajasthan has complied with the court
order, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh have introduced the programme in some
parts of the State and more recently Andhra Pradesh has begun a cooked
mid-day meal programme for children. In the meanwhile, the campaign
continues to maintain pressure on the State Governments to improve
implementation.
After achieving a measure of success in focussing judicial, executive
and public attention on the food consumption issue, the campaign has,
after the recent public hearing in Delhi, drawn up a five-point "call
for action": social security for the destitute as a matter of right,
revamping of the PDS, recognition of the right to work, expansion of
financial allocations for food programmes and implementation of the
Supreme Court's directions. As the Right to Food campaign builds up
momentum, it will inevitably have to deal with three sets of issues, two
of which have already cropped up in the five-point call for action. The
first is that is it possible to operationalise the right to food — even
`only' for the destitute — without explicit recognition of the right to
work? If the right to work too moves centre stage then the question
becomes one of state funding and organisation of employment guarantee
programmes, to begin with for unskilled labour. It then will become
imperative to pressure the state to substantially fund existing and new
employment programmes. This is not impossible, but it does widen the
campaign. The second and equally important issue is that the food
mountain of 55 million tonnes does permit expansion of the AAY and also
channel grain to expanded work programmes.
A
permanent and substantial expansion of food and employment programmes
will, however, require the state to commit financial resources, not to
mention increase procurement to keep the programmes going once the
present food mountain is run down. This too is doable, if we accept, as
we should, that meeting the right to food should be a top priority for
the country. The third issue is how far this public action programme can
go without the support of the parliamentary political parties. Expanding
the agenda and increasing its effectiveness will require involvement of
the political organisations. Unfortunately, the political class has
other agendas to pursue. Yet, considering the way the Right to Food
campaign has grown in the past couple of years and considering the
success it has had, it could turn into a mass movement that is able to
force state and society to finally tackle the problem of hunger in
India.
