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Resource centre on India's rural distress
 
 

No right to food yet! by Praful Bidwai

India has missed a historic opportunity to abolish hunger through a universal public distribution system (PDS), which entitles all citizens to affordable food. The National Advisory Council (NAC), a progressive body established by the United Progressive Alliance, was to draft such a law, but has recommended a Bill which greatly reduces the public's entitlements.

This is a setback. India's annual per capita cereal consumption has fallen to 174 kg, lower than in the least-developed countries (182 kg), or 44% below world average. India ranks 67th among 84 countries in the Global Hunger Index, and scores worse than Pakistan or Nepal.

The NAC proposes providing an entitlement to subsidised food for over 75% of India's population, comprising 90% of the rural public and half the urban population. This 75% is to be divided into "priority" and "general" categories.

The "priority" households would have a monthly entitlement of 35 kg at Rs.3 a kg for rice, Rs.2 for wheat and Re.1 for millets. The "general" households would get 20 kg at half "the current Minimum Support Price" -- or Rs.5.50-6 per kg.

But the "priority" category excludes over half the rural population and 70% of the urban population. The two categories are only slightly modified versions of the notoriously inaccurate below-poverty-line (BPL) and above-poverty-line (APL) classes, identified by various official committees and used in "targeted" PDS schemes. Such targeting has proved counter-productive.

The "priority"-"general" category differentiation is to be left to the government. Experience suggests this is likely to be arbitrary and unsatisfactory.

Numerous surveys show that BPL categorisation contains two kinds of error: exclusion of those who are poor but lack the clout to get recognised as such, and the error of false inclusion, under which the names of the non-poor enter BPL lists through political manipulation. The exclusion can be as high as 50-60%, and diversion of food over 30%.

The best way to minimise the errors is to universalise the PDS. Past experience in Kerala, and current PDS performance in Tamil Nadu, establish the decisive superiority of universalisation. This is not wasteful. The rich don't use the PDS, the poor do.

One study of the universal PDS in Kerala found those with a monthly income of Rs.1,000 or less bought 71% of their PDS entitlements, but those with incomes exceeding Rs.3,000 purchased only 6% of their entitlement.

If the government can currently procure about 55 million tonnes of foodgrains (of an output of 230-240 million tonnes), it can almost as easily procure the maximum of 85 million tonnes needed for a universal PDS.

NAC member, food-security activist and eminent economist Jean Dreze describes the recommended Bill as "a minimalist proposal that misses many important elements of food security" and allows the government "to appear to be doing something radical for food security, but it is actually more of the same." He says: "Entire fields of intervention crucial for food security have been left out."

The government speciously argues it would be unwise to procure more grain than the last three years' average of 55 million tonnes. The long-term procurement trend shows a steady, 5%-plus a year increase. Universalisation only needs a continuation of this trend.

Ultimately, the government will spend barely half the amount on food security as it does on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. That's hardly an expansive commitment to UPA-2's flagship social programme.

This failure is all the more hurtful because the additional funds needed for universal PDS -- Rs.20,000 crores a year -- are a fraction of the government's revenues, which have tripled in six years.

The government can no longer plead a paucity of funds to deny enough food to all its citizens. It blows up the bulk of this income on tax-breaks and subsidies for the rich.

The food security Bill raises larger questions about the NAC and its relationship to government. The present body is much less of a civil society-based progressive policy-oriented pressure-group than its first avatar.

The earlier body didn't have diehard neoliberals like Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav or fence-sitters like Dr. M.S. Swaminathan.

Prime Minister Singh has unduly influenced the new NAC's composition. UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi, who played a strong Left-leaning role in the first NAC, has decided not to cross swords with him.

The earlier NAC had a synergistic relationship with the Left parties, which exerted a progressive influence on UPA-1 and kept up pressure in favour of NREGA, the Right to Information Act and other participatory measures.

That relationship no longer exists. If the NAC isn't as Left-of-Centre as before, nor is the Left proactive on social issues.

Ms. Gandhi would do well to reflect on the NAC. If it is meant to be the UPA's conscience, it needs more of a soul and more panache and vibrancy. It should ambitiously and boldly attempt to do precisely what the stick-in-the-mud government would not ordinarily do.

This alone can fill the credibility gap between the promise of inclusive growth on which UPA-2 came to power, and its performance, with an inequality-enhancing, jobless and exclusionary growth pattern, in which the vast majority has no stake.

Surely, if she has sound political instincts, Ms. Gandhi would understand that this is crucial to the UPA's popularity and its ability to retain its relevance for the people.

Of all the UPA's special initiatives since 2004, the NAC has been the most productive, vastly more so than, for instance, the National Knowledge Commission. Ms. Gandhi should be proud of the NAC and encourage it to act with freedom, moral clarity and unity of purpose so it does something unusual.

The NAC must rebuild its links with civil society movements and re-energise itself. In the last instance, it's answerable not to the government, but to society and to those who represent emancipatory social change.