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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

Food security bill has a sting in the tail for Maharashtra-Yogesh Pawar
-DNA


The Centre may have used the ordinance mode to push through with the Food Security Bill in the hope that this will bring political dividends but many of its stipulations will lead to serious challenges, even in a Cong-NCP ruled state like Maharashtra. On one hand, the total food grain availability in the state will go up from 3.95 lakh tonnes to 4.25 lakh tonnes, but only 75% from existing beneficiaries in rural areas and 50% in urban areas will benefit from it. Nearly 10.75 of the 11.23 crore population in the state is entitled to avail subsidised food grains at ration shops. The new FSB will reduce this number to just 7.65 crore.

According to the latest 2011 census figures, 45.23% of the state's population lives in 54% of its urbanised area. "Hiving of this 45.23% may amount to political suicide," warned a Congress MP from Mumbai adding, "It's one thing to sit in Delhi and make policies and quite another to face the music from the voters."

Bhagwan Sahay, principal secretary, Food & Civil Supplies too admitted, "It is going to be a huge challenge to scale down the beneficiaries by 25% and 50% from rural and urban areas respectively. This will mean actually cutting down numbers from both those with Above Poverty Line (APL) and Below Poverty Line (BPL) ration cards."

The cap of 5kg per person per month, mentioned in the FSB, has already led to wide-spread furore. "If a family of five was getting Rs35 kg per month this will actually reduce by 10 kg. That doesn't sound like food security, does it?" asked Dipali Sharma of ActionAid, that has been championing food rights.

Others like Abhishek Bharadwaj of Alternative Realities, that works for the rights of the homeless, said, "The Food Security Bill aimed at giving even 5kg food grain a month at a fixed price of Re1-3 per kg through ration shops will not cover 1.5 lakh of the absolute homeless in Mumbai. The Ration Controller says that they cannot all be given ration cards."

Biraj Patnaik of the Right to Food Campaign was unhappy with the goverment choosing the ordinance route for the Bill. "Parties like the Left, the BJD and others have already gone on record to point out the problems with the bill in its current avatar.

Had it gone through a parliamentary debate, amendments could at least weed these out," he pointed out. "Given the amount of time taken, four years, one expected a better draft." He bemoaned how contractors have been given a free hand in the current bill and malnutrition has been all but been forgotten. "The standards set are much lower than what even the Supreme Court had earlier recommended."

Agreeing with Patnaik and Bharadwaj on the issue of the homeless Sharma said: "The Act could have ensured a hunger and malnutrition free India. However its narrow vision on the pre-requisites of food security leaves out several key nutritional determinants and in that sense it becomes merely food entitlement and not right to food."