Food Gambit

Reeling under huge fiscal deficit, it is unclear how the Govt. would fund such an expensive scheme also how it would acquire enough foodgrains to mete out to such a whopping population.

Despite series of  scams and comprehensive malfunctioning in right to education and right to work, Govt. seems undeterred and hell bent for implementing National Food Security Bill before the advent of general elections. The bill has been passed by cabinet and is likely to be kept before Parliament during the second half of the budget session.  This Bill aims at giving food security to 75% of rural and 50% of urban population. Reeling under huge fiscal deficit, it is unclear how the Govt. would fund such an expensive scheme also how it would acquire enough foodgrains to mete out to such a whopping population.

The Bill will provide guaranteed 5 kilograms of rice, wheat or coarse cereals to all the identified beneficiaries at a flat rate of Rs 3 per kg for rice, Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 1 for coarse cereals. There would not be any Above or Below Poverty Line demarcation but entitlements for beneficiaries under the Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) under which 35 kilograms of grains is provided per family will be retained in the Bill. Overall 67% of India’s 1.2 billion people are being covered in this scheme.

Why India is heavily undernourished despite a long history of food subsidies is because the quality and type of food being delivered don’t appeal to the poor in the first place. It is pathetic that no innovation is palpable in the mindset of Govt. to improvise the same. What is being delivered on the name of cheap food is low quality wheat, rice, millet etc. These grains aren’t enough for nourishment and quality of food like pulses, ghee, salt, green vegetables etc are too expensive to afford for destitute.

NFSB is based on creaky Public Distribution System that has been blamed time and again for failing to deliver the goods because of massive pilferage. The PDS is carried out nationwide with the help of over 5,00,000 ration shops. It will also prescribe guidelines to states for the identification of beneficiaries.  Infact,  a study done by the Planning Commission in 2005 showed that 58% of the subsidized food grains issued from the central pool do not reach the Below Poverty Line (BPL) families because of identification errors, non-transparent operation and unethical practices in the implementation of PDS. Given this NFSB will be disastrous more than any other scheme as exorbitant fund and food grains are at stake.

The government needs around 61 million tonnes of grains a year to implement the Act, which is nearly one-fourth of the country’s total food grain output. A couple of national-level farmers’ organizations have opposed the National Food Security Bill, saying it would “lead to nationalization of agriculture by making the government the biggest buyer, hoarder and seller of food grains”.

Agriculture market must be unregulated and farmers must be sufficiently incentivized to raise their food production. Globally this is a general practice but UPA’s flagship NFSB focuses on just opposite of that. As the subsidy burden is going to be quite high, Govt. will keep the minimum support price lower discouraging the small and marginal farmers to grow food grain. Thus, NFSB is likely to disastrously distort the already dilapidating food market in India.

The lack of vision visible in NFSB establishes the fact that it addresses nothing more than political motives of Congress. Going against the recommendations of Kelkar Committee to contain the food subsidy, Govt. intends to launch an even more expensive subsidy doll-out program which will raise the food subsidy burden to 1.1 lakh crore from the current 90,000 crore.  Failure to target right beneficiaries and faulty delivery mechanism can never make NFSB workable. A revolutionary, an innovative approach to architect the food subsidy program is the need of time otherwise Right to food security in its current form would mean nothing to who it aims at.