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Acting against hunger by Bhaskar Dutta


A parliamentary standing committee has recently asked the government to introduce the national food security Bill in the winter session of the Lok Sabha. A promise to implement a Bill of this kind was first mooted in President Pratibha Patil's inaugural speech last year when she mentioned the government's intention to provide each family below the poverty line (BPL) with 25 kg of foodgrains a month at Rs 3 per kg.

The public debate about the "right to food" and the appropriate contents of the Act has continued ever since, and has indeed intensified because food prices keep marching up. In particular, social activists have argued that the right cannot be restricted simply to the BPL families and that the quantity of grain mentioned in the president's speech is quite inadequate.

Perhaps, in response to this, the National Advisory Council (NAC) has recommended that the Act should provide every family in the 200 most disadvantaged districts with 35 kg of rice or wheat at Rs 3 per kg. The NAC also suggested that the benefits of the Act may be restricted to BPL families in the rest of the country, although it also set the target of universal coverage by 2015. Although Sonia Gandhi's presence in the NAC gives its recommendations enormous weight, the government has still been dragging its feet and it is not clear as yet about the contents of the Act in its final form.

Is the government's reluctance to implement the NAC recommendations justified? The answer has nothing to do with the intrinsic merits of such a legislation. It needs no statistical facts to convince anyone that vast numbers of our poor go hungry to bed every night although every government in independent India has promised to work tirelessly for the poor! That is why a legal right to food is so important to the poor it forces the government to honour its promises. However, no government should pass a law that simply cannot be implemented. Routine and repeated violations of individual rights debase the very meaning of rights and laws.

In the foreseeable future, even a government with the best of intentions cannot ensure that it provides BPL families throughout the country with the stipulated amount of foodgrains. The reason for this is not the availability of food as we surely know, Food Corporation of India (FCI) warehouses are stuffed to their capacity. The only real constraint is the lack of any adequate delivery mechanism.

The public distribution system has become an article of faith in India. In fact, even the NAC suggests that grain to the poor should be distributed through the PDS. However, this faith ignores completely the wealth of data establishing the gross inadequacy of the PDS. Consider some of the evidence against the PDS. A recent study shows that two-thirds of the grain allocated to the PDS for distribution to the poor end up in the open market. Contrary to popular belief, large numbers of the poor do not purchase their foodgrain from the PDS for a variety of reasons lack of PDS outlets specially in the north, absence of BPL cards, the inability to buy in bulk. Not surprisingly, there are estimates showing that the poor receive only 10 per cent of the total food subsidy bill.

Perhaps, the PDS can be improved. But this is not going to happen in a hurry. However, there is no need to wait for the wholesale revamping of the PDS before launching a modified form of the food security Bill. A start can be made by initiating the first component of the NAC recommendation of providing universal coverage to the poorest 200 districts. Incidentally, universal coverage in any given region has the advantage that it abolishes the need to identify BPL families. The restriction on geographical coverage will obviously make it that much easier for the government to ensure that an adequate delivery mechanism is in place in these areas. The Bill can also specify a reasonable timetable within which food security will be extended gradually all over the country.

It is also important to realise the imperative to look for alternatives to the PDS. The government's Economic Survey for the current year set the ball rolling by discussing the system of food stamps. The use of food stamps originated in the US in 1964, and has since then been used in several countries including Sri Lanka, Jamaica, Mexico and Honduras. Under this scheme, the target population is issued coupons or stamps which recipients can exchange for stipulated amounts of food at any shop not just ration shops. The shop owners can then deposit these coupons in their bank accounts and be credited appropriate amounts, which depend on prevailing market prices.

The biggest advantage of food stamps is that it would wipe out the leakages associated with the PDS. Moreover, to the extent that private traders are more efficient than the FCI, there would be a social saving in terms of the lower delivery costs. Of course, the system is not foolproof. But then, the benchmark is the PDS, and so the appropriate question to ask is how any new system compares relative to the PDS.