Ensuring
food security was the big promise of UPA-2. The promise
to enact legislation to ensure a minimum quantity
of affordable food to all poor households in the country
was part of the election manifesto of the Congress
Party that leads the government. The 100 day agenda
of the government made it a priority, even as rising
food prices made the quotidian task of ensuring adequate
food much more difficult for the majority of the country.
It has indeed been obvious for some time that, given
the centrality and urgency of the problems of rising
food prices and growing food insecurity in the country,
delivering on this one issue would have given the
government the stamp of popular approval, regardless
of the impact of its other policies. Quick and decisive
action on this crucial front was therefore widely
expected of the central government.
But, as in several other areas recently, the central
government seemed to have lost its way in this matter.
It was caught by self-created doubts with respect
to the spending implications of providing adequate
food to those who need it, and fiscal parsimony seemed
to prevail over the needs of the hungry. Thus, an
early version of proposed Food Security Bill that
was sent by the central Ministry of Food and Public
Distribution to state governments was shocking in
how little it aimed to provide: reducing the promised
food grain delivery to 25 kg per household per month
compared to the 35 kg promise earlier; confining the
promise of ''food security'' to only those households
who hold BPL cards to prove that they are poor; leaving
open the possibility for state governments to substitute
cash transfers for the physical delivery of food grains.
This draft was roundly critiqued by state governments
as well as by those activists and political parties
that have been actively involved in campaigning for
universal and affordable public food distribution.
When the National Advisory Council (NAC) - a body
headed by Sonia Gandhi - was reconstituted to include
a number of such activists who have been crucial in
the campaign to enforce the right to food, it was
announced that the formulation of an appropriate Bill
would be the first item on its agenda. This gave rise
to renewed hope that the legislation on this matter
might actually turn out to be one that did provide
this right to every citizen.
That is why the draft that has come out of the NAC
deliberations has come as such an unwelcome surprise.
If anything, it is just as bad as the earlier version
circulated by bureaucrats from the central Ministry.
Far from altering the divisive and unfair division
of people into BPL beneficiaries and others who would
be excluded from public distribution, it reinforces
the division, and adds to it another even more egregious
distinction based on location. It is actually hard
to believe that such a draft Bill could be produced
by people who have been campaigning actively and often
passionately for the right to food.
The main pillar of the proposed legislation is what
is called ''an inclusive and expanded PDS'' (Public
Distribution System) - which turns out to involve
almost the opposite! The NAC has proposed one of two
alternatives for rural areas: (1) to cover 80 per
cent of rural households with 35 kg of grain per month
at Rs 3 per kg; or (2) to cover 42 per cent of rural
households with 35 kg of grain per month at Rs 3 per
kg and the rest of the rural households with 25 kg
of grain at Rs 5 or Rs 5.70 per kg. In urban areas,
only 33 per cent of households are to be covered with
35 kg of grain every month at Rs 3 per kg, and these
households are to be identified as those who are homeless,
or slum residents, or in vulnerable occupations or
socially vulnerable.
Not only are these extraordinary (and often very fine)
distinctions to be made in order to determine which
households are eligible to receive the subsidised
grain from the PDS, but there is further geographic
exclusion as well! The so-called ''inclusive'' PDS (which
actually excludes a significant part of the population
and is prone to all the usual Type I errors of unfair
exclusion and Type II errors of unjustified inclusion)
is to be confined to 150 districts in the current
year, and gradually expanded to cover the rest of
the country by 2014-15.
Another extremely disturbing feature of the NAC proposal
is the complete silence on food distribution for the
APL (above poverty line) population. In effect, this
proposal amounts to a restriction on the existing
functioning of the PDS, indeed a winding down, which
would deprive those who are not defined as eligible
according to the Act ( at least 40 per cent of the
population) of any access to the rationing system.
This is so far from being universal - or being in
any way ''a legal guarantee to all residents of India
to a range of entitlements which will ensure them
the right to food and secure their nutritional status''
- that it would be comical if it were not so tragic.
Let us consider what the actual situation on the ground
is today. The PDS system is based on a transfer of
grain from the central pool to the state according
to a formula, and thereafter state governments have
the responsibility of distributing the grain and the
freedom to enlarge the system and increase the subsidy
element if they so choose. Currently at least eight
states in the country are distributing 35 kg of grain
per household at even more subsidised prices (Rs 1
or Rs 2 per kg) in some cases to nearly the entire
population.
What this scheme will do is effectively reduce the
amount of grain these states received from the central
pool, and mess up their finances by forcing them to
purchase more expensive grain if they want to continue
this system. States like Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which
have the best functioning PDS, will be very badly
hit by this move. Since no grain will apparently be
distributed according to APL population, the burden
on them will be even greater.
In pushing for a greatly truncated and extremely exclusionary
PDS system, the NAC draft effectively undermines the
PDS itself. There is a large section in the draft
devoted to measures for ensuring transparency and
reducing corruption in the PDS, which itself is rather
strange in something that purports to be legislation
rather than a policy document. But more significantly
it omits to note the basic point that the PDS is most
successful and least leakage-prone in precisely those
states where it is most tending to universal, where
there is a sufficiently large body of citizenry to
ensure greater accountability of the system.
There is another fundamental problem with this approach:
it confuses between poverty and food insecurity. In
fact, food insecurity (as evident from all nutritional
outcome indicators) is much more widespread in India
than income poverty or even vulnerability defined
according to other indicators like occupation and
housing condition. Further, food insecurity often
varies quite sharply even within households, and gender
differences are marked. A system that deprives households
that deemed to be above some arbitrary poverty line
of sufficient food grain at reasonable prices will
end up reducing consumption of women and girls, adding
to health problems and affecting the development of
children. The only way to avoid this is to have a
universal system that provides all households with
equal access to grain at some reasonable rate, combined
with special measures for the particularly deprived
groups.
What is the thinking behind this strange and even
appalling proposal? After all, many of those who have
supported it in the NAC are unambiguously those who
have fought and continue to fight for the rights of
the average citizens, and particularly the more exploited
and marginalised groups. They cannot be accused of
insensitivity or indifference to the concerns of the
majority of the population, and they have sufficient
and constant field experience that must continuously
remind them of the manifold and terrible impacts that
the rise in food prices is having on the lives of
ordinary people. So they are likely to be more conscious
than most, of the need to have a universal system
that will actually ''ensure that no woman, man or child
resident in India will sleep hungry or be malnourished.''
So how could they come to agree with a proposal that
is so far away from the laudable and self-declared
goal? The idea seems to be that the system must give
as much grain as possible at Rs 3 per kg to as many
people as possible within some declared fiscal limits,
and simply exclude the others. The members of the
NAC seem to have been excessively cowed down by technocrats
who have declared the fiscal impossibility of a truly
universal system and by others who have declared that
a universal scheme would require grain procurement
far in excess of what is feasible or likely.
Let us suppose for a moment that these constraints
are actually binding (which in fact they are not).
Is there no better option than the one that has been
presented? The NAC has chosen the path of exclusion,
with defined beneficiaries getting a subsidised price
and nothing for the rest. But it is also possible
to think - even keeping within the same fiscal and
foodgrain surplus constraints - of a universal system
at a slightly higher rate rather than the current
proposal. This has the immense merits of avoiding
Type I and Type II errors and reducing the proclivity
for corruption. It has the even greater merit of keeping
the PDS alive, kicking and with a greater proportion
of the people (including the middle class with political
voice) interested in making sure it is accountable.
Within this broad system, there must of course be
additional measures to provide for especially vulnerable
categories that need greater assistance, as in the
Antyodaya scheme.
It seems that the obsessive desire to keep the price
of subsidised food grain at the level which was promised
- even if only for some chosen sections and at the
cost of large-scale exclusion and possible diversion
- has dominated over the goal of ensuring a viable
and vibrant system of public procurement and distribution.
This has an additional danger. The original purpose
of the PDS was to ensure the movement of grain from
surplus to deficit areas. But with the new system,
all the surplus grain will be allocated according
to fairly rigid predetermined criteria. What happens
if there is a major drought or famine like conditions
because of weather or natural calamity in a particular
area? What about areas of persistent shortage and
chronically deficient states?
If any system of food procurement and distribution
has to cope with varying situations, it has to allow
for the possibility of some people moving in and out
of the system, choosing to use the ration shops when
market prices are high and opting out when market
prices are low. Only when the food security of the
entire population is secured in a coherent manner
can we be sure that we are also securing the food
security of its most deprived sections.
