BackTo criticize the food Bill is scaremongering: Dipa Sinha
The right to food campaigner talks about the importance of the Bill in an interview
Premium(Ramesh Pathania )
The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) is just a signature away from becoming law after being passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. It was passed by the Lok Sabha on 26 August and needs the President’s signature to be enacted. Critics have dismissed the proposed legislation as a drain on India’s resources.
Dipa Sinha, a right to food campaigner who has been associated with the legislation from the early stages of drafting, comments in an interview on the impact of the proposed law on malnourishment, economy and subsidies. Edited exerpts:
Will this legislation eliminate starvation deaths and malnourishment?
It is difficult to say whether this Bill will stop this but I think it has a lot of potential. It has the potential to make the PDS (public distribution system) reach a lot of people it did not reach yet. So something as stark as starvation deaths, it should be able to address this. So I think it will address the hunger where there is no food in the house, but it stops there. Malnutrition is more than rice and wheat, it is clean water, sanitation and much more. Some people make the argument that because this amount of cereal is given at such low prices, it frees up some money for people to buy better quality food.
What about another problem we face that of rotting foodgrains?
Absolutely, and that is why this law must have been done much earlier because we have had grains rotting for the past four years. Now because the price is so low and the coverage is higher, so there will be higher demand and states will also lift the grains and it will be distributed.
You have called this a minimalist Bill. But there are critics who say India will have to produce more foodgrains, food subsidies will be higher because of higher input costs like fertilizer and power subsidies.
So you categorize all this—blaming the Bill for the falling rupee, apprehensions over widening of fiscal deficit, etc—as scaremongering?
Broadly, yes. If the Bill was more comprehensive as the Right to Food was campaigning for, then the budget would have been slightly higher. So there is no reason to worry that this Bill will affect the economy. Now we are spending on storing the cereals. Now it goes to the poor and they are at least giving ₹ 2 or ₹ 3 per kg for the cereals we are paying money to store. If people are better fed and healthier then that contributes to a productive population and contributes to GDP. We must look at it as an investment in our future work force.
There is also criticism that the NFSB could lead to food inflation. Also though procurement of grains was good in 2012-13, what happens when there is a drought or bad monsoon?
We have buffer stocks for precisely this reason for the years when we don’t do well. Second, this is a very big country. When you have drought— say the year 2009 which was a drought year—we didn’t see production fall so much because even when we have drought it is not in every district of the country. Even from a rights perspective, in a year of drought, the poorest are affected first. In the year of floods, in the year of a calamity, that is the time when we need such intervention. If you are making it a legal entitlement, it is in the year of an emergency that you do more. We should not be in a state where we have to be dependent on imports, but if we have to do that, we have to do that.
What about the PDS which will be channelizing the grains? Has it been toned up? It has been blamed for leakages and many other problems
There are problems with the PDS and all estimates show that leakages are very huge. But if you look at the trend of the leakages, they have been decreasing across the country. If you look at where leakages have been declining it is in areas where there has been an expansion of coverage, moving away from this BPL—APL (above poverty line) system which this Bill is doing. And declining prices. So this Bill, just by expanding coverage, will bring the leakage down further. The second is very much related to governance. There we will have to see how much the state governments will really take this on. There, there could be some uneven implementation because recommendations that this Bill recommends—computerization, better grievance redressal mechanism, greater transparency—all this is the responsibility of the state governments. In states where governance is poor we will have to see whether they take this on or not. There is a lot of pressure from the Act and from the Supreme Court for the government to act.
States like Tamil Nadu have done well because the ruling parties have taken an interest. So political will plays a big role in the implementation of schemes like subsidized food grains.
That is what it comes down to—if there is political will then they are able to set up systems in no time at all. It took like five to eight years for Chhattisgarh to set up its system and now it has 4-7% of leakages according to the NSSO (National Sample Survey Office). So of course, it comes down to political will so we need to see what happens in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, which are the states where PDS revival has not happened so much.
What do you think about the provision for grievance redressal mechanism?
This is also a little disappointing, now with NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) the Right to Education, we have seen how important it is to have a grievance redressal mechanism for these entitlements to reach the people. A grievance mechanism should be at the panchayat level ideally but under this Bill, it begins at the district level. The penalties also are not that stringent. It is not enough to deter people from being corrupt or inefficient.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the NFSB?
The first really strong point I think is that the government recognizes that there is widespread hunger and malnutrition in the country and that it is the responsibility of the state to do something about that. The day this Bill was passed, every party unanimously agreed that there is hunger, there is malnutrition and that we need to do something about this. Secondly, within the PDS we will see now a massive expansion and the coverage of two thirds of the population and, in effect, it will be even higher because some state governments like Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh are already doing much more. And particularly in poor states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand—where there has not been much improvement in the PDS in the last few years, like you saw in the rest of the country, the coverage is going to be even higher under the Act. So in the rural areas of Bihar and Jharkhand, more than 85 % of people are going to be covered under the Act, so it’s near universalization which means we will be able to tackle a lot of exclusion errors we currently see. Experience has also shown that in states where it works, when coverage is expanded and the price is brought down, then there is greater interest in the scheme. People want to access it so they put more pressure and this brings down the leakages. Along with this, if some reforms are done in the PDS like this Act recommends, then leakages can be brought down to a large extent. One final thing which is positive is that this act has universal maternity entitlement which not many are talking about. I think it is quite historic because it is the first time that we are recognizing women as workers and that when they have a child and when they have to take off to breastfeed, they deserve a compensation, which women, in the organized sector take for granted.
And the weaknesses?
While the Act goes a few steps forward in terms of expanding the PDS and using maternity entitlements, there are many things that have been left out as well. First, there is no definition of an identification criterion. Although we have expanded the coverage, its 67%—so 25% in rural areas and 50% in the urban areas—have to be excluded. The Act does not tell you who these people are. So there is a possibility of it becoming something very arbitrary. The ideal situation would have been to universalize it. If you are doing an exclusion approach then you have to define very clear exclusion criteria, like income tax payees, having a regular job. A second thing that is missing is that certain groups, even with the PDS system, will be left out. Like the old, the disabled, the urban homeless, the migrants who needed a cooked meal programme, through say, community kitchens—like Tamil Nadu now has—which was part of earlier drafts, now has been dropped. So the really weakest, the last person, who should have been central to this Bill, still does not have a guarantee of food security. Third, weakness is that food security is now widely understood to include nutrition. And this Bill is still heavily cereal based, it also does not take into account pulses and oils for children it has made it a legal entitlement. It is a minimalistic Bill although it is going a step forward, it could have been much more comprehensive.
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