Looming contretemps on food security

There can be no quarrel with the objectives of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) introduced in the Lok Sabha on December 22, 2011. They are indeed noble. For the first time in the 62-year long history of free India, there has been an acknowledgment of the right to food being an unresilable commitment of the state.

The pangs of hunger and the ravages of malnourishment can be known only by those who suffer from them, and every endeavour and every measure that will make it possible for the disadvantaged, the vulnerable, the starving and the destitute to have ready and affordable access to adequate quantities of food, interpreted in its broadest connotation, is both justified and worthwhile, falling as it does within the mandatory duty of not only governments but the well-off, well-heeled and well-fed strata of society.

But there has been no effort by the UPA Government to allay the misgivings among even those who support the objectives of the Bill about some vital and fundamental questions connected with it.

The first and foremost among them is whether the same objectives could not be achieved in an equally effective, if not in a more purposeful, fashion by means other than the enactment of such a cumbersome and complicated legislation.

For instance, the Bill leaves in a limbo many crucial aspects: Criteria for determining priority and general categories of beneficiaries; the quantum of the huge investment on augmenting production, and on the infrastructure for transport and storage; the scheme to help the States make good the shortfalls in allocations of food grains, tide over the teething troubles and bear the additional subsidy burden; and the manner of resolving conflicts arising from the Central and State food security establishments running in parallel.

WORKABLE APPROACH

Also, as one who had been in charge of the Food Department at the Centre and overseen the working of the Food Corporation of India and the nation's public distribution system (PDS), and also as one who had a comparative acquaintance with the food security frameworks round the globe while chairing the UN Committee on World Food Security, I am of the opinion that India has every reason to be proud of its PDS which has been doing yeoman service by carrying supplies of food grains and essential items of daily consumption to more than half-a-million fair price shops to the nooks and corners of States.

True, it is not perfect, and is crying out for improvements. Revamping and strengthening the PDS, and making it the mainstay of carefully screened beneficiaries deserving of food entitlements on the scale envisaged in the NFSB would be a far more workable approach than the costly paraphernalia envisaged in the Bill.

The whole setup — all the way down from the National and State Food Commissions to the District-cum-Block level Facilitation Committees, Grievance Redressal Officer and the like — is administratively and functionally incapable of meeting expectations.

GATHERING STORM

Next is the doubtful Constitutional validity of the Bill. The Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Ms. J. Jayalalithaa, has already fired the first salvo against the encroachment it makes on States' rights.

She has been closely followed by the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Ms Mayawati, who has called it ‘impractical' as well.

In addition, sundry civil society groups have voiced both their suspicion and opposition about the real intent and purport of the Bill. When the CMs of other States too wake up to the implications and implementational problems of the various clauses of the Bill, the UPA Government may well find itself in another imbroglio of its own making.

It is typically oblivious to the gathering storm with no evidence of either the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, or his colleagues, preparing themselves in advance to ward it off.

Apparently, the Centre has introduced the Bill banking on Entry 33 of the Concurrent List which refers to ‘production and distribution of foodstuffs' as being within the legislative competence of both the Centre and the States.

Instead of springing it unilaterally on the nation, the Prime Minister should have first undertaken a process of consultation by convening a Conference of CMs to ascertain their views. Even now it is not too late to do so.

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