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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Lessons from America & beyond by Biraj Patnaik

Lessons from America & beyond by Biraj Patnaik

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published Published on Jul 23, 2010   modified Modified on Jul 23, 2010

The National Advisory Council, led by UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, has come up with the muchawaited contours of the National Food Security Act. The NFSA, it is hoped, will become India’s flagship programme for tackling hunger and malnutrition, equal in scale and vision to the ambitious and highly successful Fome Zero Programme launched by President Lula Da Silva in Brazil. The UPA government is also hoping that the NFSA will have the same electoral impact in the next general elections that the NREGS, it believes, had achieved in 2009. And it is perhaps not mistaken in this belief since almost every single state where the anti-incumbency factor was overcome, cutting across party lines, in the last round of state elections and the 2009 general elections, were states that chose to consign the official poverty figures of the Planning Commission to the trash bin (where they richly deserve to be in) and provide cheaper foodgrain to a much larger section of their population and at prices lower than what the Government of India was providing. Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Tamil Nadu, four states with four different political parties in power, led the way in covering larger numbers of poor and admittedly, better provisioning of foodgrain.

No sooner had this proposal emerged than the rumblings in the corridors of power on the fiscal implications of such a proposal have reached an annoying pitch, with the usual arguments on whether we can afford further “wasteful subsidies” that threaten to increase the fiscal deficit and affect growth rates. We can reasonably expect the pitch to get shriller by the day as the countdown for the NFSA begins, with right-wing economists joining in the debate, along with Planning Commission mandarins and an assortment of Indian babudom, which wants to achieve food security with a fiscal neutral bill.

It would be sobering for these economists and babus to look at the expenditures that some of the most prosperous countries in the world are incurring to stave hunger and protect children and adult populations from hunger, before launching the mournful dirges on enhanced state subsidies. The United States is a case in point. The nominal per capita income in the US, the world’s largest economy, is close to 50 times that of India. Yet, 40 million Americans (one in every eight) are on food stamps, with the US spending close to $60 billion (seven times the NREGS budget) on this single programme that entitles recipients to buy food from designated outlets.

Similarly, the immensely popular WIC programme, which is the American equivalent of the ICDS and was started around the same time, provides nutritional support and health services to disadvantaged American mothers and children. WIC today covers one in every two babies born in the US and the budgetary support for this programme is close to $7 billion. The Obama Administration is seeking an additional $10 billion from Congress to deal with childhood hunger and ensure the US manages to overcome the crisis by 2015.

The proposals of the NFSA include community kitchens for all urban areas to provide subsidized, hot, cooked meals to the urban poor and a destitute feeding programme that allows those on the verge of starvation to partake of the midday meal or food at the ICDS centres. These could well draw inspiration from the Restos du Coeur (“Restaurants of the Heart”) run by a charitable organization started by the French Comedian Calouche in 1985, with the intention of serving 2,000-3,000 free meals to the poor in France, that serves 8.5 lakh meals everyday. It is one of a myriad number of organizations including the ubiquitous Salvation Army, in the developed world, running soup kitchens.

For those who are opposed to the idea of the NFSA, on the grounds of a burgeoning food subsidy, the experience of the richest countries in the world, should be an instructive lesson.


The Times of India, 23 July, 2010, http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2010/07/23&PageLabel=13&EntityId=Ar01301&ViewMode=H
 

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