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Food for a billion by Nitin Sethi


On Wednesday, the National Advisory Council turned UPA's election promises into firm deliverables under the National Food Security Bill. That was a tough one to resolve itself. But it's a job half done as yet. The Sonia Gandhi-led NAC is now going to get into a much more difficult arena.

It has to figure out provisions for the act that hold administration and bureaucracy accountable for delivery and also ensure that the foodgrain in the government granary grows over the years to match the enhanced coverage it has got the government committed to.

The first of its tasks is a battle with bureaucracy that could be won with some effort but the latter – increasing production and government procurement to match the needs of increasing coverage of the act – is a long-drawn war.
The members of NAC who were inclined towards a more expansive and near-universal food distribution system have had to argue and bargain hard with the Planning Commission and the food ministry to get to where they have so far.

While the NAC backed down on the earlier demand of providing 35kg of grain at Rs 3 to almost 70% of the country's population, they have rather inconspicuously got away with a dramatic move. They have completely altered the way the poor are identified in the country. The government will now move away from the age-old technique of economic criteria-based assessment of households – do you own a lavatory, do you have a kutcha or pucca house etc – to a generic, umbrella approach.

Now if a household belongs to certain disadvantaged groups and communities — SCs/STs, homeless, destitute, single women households, HIV patients etc — it will automatically be included.

What it does with one stroke is take away the existing power of the Planning Commission to draw an artificial 'statistical' cut-off percentage of BPL for the food scheme. The NAC has decided to start a series of nutrition schemes for the most vulnerable groups and enhance the mid-day meal and Integrated Child Development Schemes (ICDS).

All rural and urban destitutes (including those living by alms), the aged, disabled and infirm adults, single women-headed households, the homeless, families of released bonded workers, all households which do not have any male able-bodied adult member, all rural SC ST households across the country will be universally covered by special nutrition support schemes – again a group target approach rather than an income level approach.

But this also means that the grain requirement and subsidy bill will increase substantially for the government. Especially, as the universal coverage of the bill gets expanded to more and more blocks – and that is bound to happen as much out of political demand (remember NREGA) as compulsions of the next general elections.

At present, the government supplies 27.4 million tonne of rice and wheat for PDS, which costs it Rs 56,000 crore (in 2010-11). It estimates to have 50 million tonne of grain in its godowns at the worst point of the year.

Back of the envelope calculations show the first year of NFSA, when one-fourth of the blocks or districts get almost universal coverage and special nutrition schemes are launched, would require around 50 million tonne of grain. The subsidy bill will go up by around Rs 20,000 crore.

But even so, the increase of fiscal subsidy might require only a political decision; supply of grain, on the other hand, is a governance issue that the NAC will have to fight and push hard.

The government has announced a 'second green revolution' through the non-irrigated lands but the agricultural ministry's past record does not inspire confidence. To assure itself that the NFSA does not come undone in future years, the NAC will need to set the course for this second 'revolution' and push the government to procure more. The latter is beset with macroeconomic concerns of how increased government purchase will hit prices and inflation.

Enhancing production alongside will become mandatory.

This would be the toughest bit to ensure because these issues will lie beyond the mandate of the NFSA. They would have to be embedded in an overall economic policy shift that will require increased budgetary allocations to agriculture, combined with the same intellectual vigour that India witnessed during the first green revolution.