Food Bill Critique

8/2/2019 Food Bill Critique

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The Damp Squib of a National Food Security Bill

In December 2011, just before the end of the winter session of the Parliament, theCentral Government placed the National Food Security Bill before the Lok Sabha. Thiswas a decisive step toward fulfilling the UPA2’s election promise of passing a law for foodsecurity. The Bill is at present with the Parliamentary Standing Committee and is

receiving inputs for changes from members of the public as well as GovernmentDepartments and State Governments.

With a steady and high growth rate of 6-9% in the past few years, India can now boastof having 48 multi-billionaires whose total wealth is Rs 9 lakh 54 thousand crores (Rs.95,35,40,00,00,000). Yet 43% of our children are malnourished – a “shame” accordingto our Prime Minister! (Whose shame, we wonder!) We also have overflowing godowns of cereals and farmers who commit suicide because they cannot sell the potatoes and thepaddy that they produce. A food security bill should have dealt with all thesecontradictions to provide food security for all. However, to say the least, the Bill hasproved to be a damp squib. Its limitations are given below:

• Missing Basics: Though it claims to be a food security Bill, it has nothing to say

on the basics that would provide food security- fair employment, proper wages,control of productive resources etc. So, it amounts to the provision of atemporary dole in socio-economic conditions that remain unchanged.

• Nothing Concrete on production, procurement and storage: Despiteclaiming to be a Food Security Bill, it is strangely silent on the very importantissues of food production, procurement and storage. Provisions for advancing tofood and nutritional security, with measures for revitalizing agriculture andinterventions related to procurement, storage and movement of food grain havebeen relegated to a Schedule and are not even mandatory duties for theGovernment.

• Targeting: Entitlements under the Bill are limited and targeted. It provides only

cereals or ready-to-eat food and cooked meals in limited quantities to a limitednumber of people, only under certain conditions and at particular times. Ittherefore fails to guarantee access to all people at all times, not being a universalright.

• No Nutritional Security: Nutritional security requires a comprehensive basketof food, with adequate quantities of pulses, oil, fruits, vegetables, milk and otherfood items. The NFSB provides for cereals alone for the population to be coveredunder the PDS. It therefore does not accept well thought out norms for thenutrition of workers and other members of the public.

• Inadequate Quantities: Statistics show declining food availability among thegeneral population. Population reporting a calorie intake level of “less than 100%” of the norm adopted for minimum wage calculations of 2700 kcal formed 66% of

the total in rural areas and 70% of the total in urban areas. The incidence of indebtedness, especially among rural labour households, has increased from25.0% of all rural households in 1999-2000 to 47.3% in 2004-05.A significantproportion of the total debt was for household consumption (29.4%), showingthat meeting consumption needs is a big problem especially for rural workers.Wage levels are very low and in 2009-10, the share of food in total householdexpenditure in rural India in respect of bottom 10% population was 65% and62% in urban areas. Despite clear indications of declining food consumption andincreasing hunger and malnutrition and indebtedness among the working peopleof the country for consumption needs, the Government has only given a paltry



amount of 7 kg per head per month for the priority group and only 3 kg per headper month for the general group. These quantities meet neither the nutritionalrequirements for a healthy life nor even the present consumption levels.According to Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) norms, the calorierequirements for a moderate worker are about 14 kg of cereal, 1.5 kg of dal and800gm of oil per person per month. The entitlement provided by the bill falls farshort of this.

• Not time bound: The Bill has been left open-ended and gives no definite date fornotification. It allows for different dates for the notification of various sections of the law. This brings into question the seriousness of the Government as regardsthe Act.

• Undefined Beneficiaries: Any law must clearly state what the entitlements areand who the beneficiaries are, this being an essential function of Parliament whichcannot delegate this responsibility to the Executive. The present law delegatesthe selection of the entitlement holder under the category of priority and generalhouseholds to the Central Government instead of Parliament itself, thus giving tothe Central Government a function that is constitutionally the prerogative of Parliament.

• APL – BPL in a new form: According to the 61st Round of the NSSO survey, asmany as 51% of rural households possessing less than 0.01 hectares of land(landless workers and marginal farmers) had no ration card at all. On the otherhand, amongst the richest 25% rural households, 43% or almost half had BPLcards.1 Despite the proven failure of the targeted approach, the NFSB continueswith this approach. Not only that, it has instead of the APL-BPL bifurcation, nowcompounded the complication further by having three categories – the excluded,priority households and general households. The only solution is to go back to auniversal system that existed before the 1990’s. Universal entitlements becomeall the more pressing in a global warming scenario, which, established sciencesuggests, is here to stay. Erratic rainfall, higher summer temperatures, moreintense rains in a short time, warmer winters, drought etc have becomecommonplace and will only intensify in the coming years. This makes food

production dependent on chance, particularly for those relying on rain-fedagriculture, and results in their food security becoming even more precarious.Universal PDS is one crucial mechanism to ensure at least the minimum access tofood, and reduce malnutrition and distress migration for millions.

• Conditionalities for rolling out entitlements: The Bill seems to be aimed atreducing the obligations of governments. Even with the targeted and minimalistsystem proposed, the entitlements of the general households are “linked to such

reforms in the PDS and from such date as may be prescribed by the Central Government ”. So there is no guarantee of entitlements for a large section of thepopulation. Linking benefits to reforms prescribed by Central Governmentpunishes those living in states that have poor governance.

• Cash Transfers: In three places in the Bill, there is a provision for theintroduction of cash instead of foodgrain. All these provisions open the door to awholesale replacement of the PDS with cash transfers, impacting household foodsecurity. This will also affect farmers as the Government will not procure grain orstore it as it will not need to run PDS shops. This is also a threat to the nation’sfood security. Cash transfers should not be permitted as an easy alternative tothe provision of the entitled quantity of foodgrain under any circumstance.Further, in a patriarchal society like India, the control of money is with males and

1 http://mospi.nic.in/mospi_new/upload/61R_1.0.pdf



there is a possibility that the cash will be misused for purchasing of liquor orgambling. It would even in the best of circumstances be used for family needslike medical care and education of children. It would not necessarily translate intonutritional security. Cash transfers might also legitimise non-regulation of foodprices in the market on which the majority relies.

• Impact on Agriculture: While declining food production could result if the Bill

succeeds in replacing foodgrain with cash, another adverse impact would bethrough downward pressure on Minimum Support Price (MSP). The Bill says thatthe issue price of foodgrain for the general group would be half the MSP. Thisgives an express pressure on the Government to keep MSP low in order to saveon subsidies in the Food Security Bill. It is therefore important that the issue priceand MSP be delinked. Instead, the Government must guarantee purchase of anyamount of grains that farmers are willing to sell at Minimum Support Prices.Minimum Support Price for grain procured should be of total cost of productionincluding that of family labour plus 50% as recommended by the NationalFarmers Commission. Storage for long periods of time and transport from thesurplus state to the deficit states at present makes up 30% of the cost of foodgrain to the Government. Decentralised procurement of cereals, pulses,oilseeds and millets from all mandis all over the country, instead of relying (as at

present) on only a few states for its entire procurement; local storage anddistribution of procured grains, with godowns in every block and in every villagein accessible and hilly areas would save up to 30% of the cost of economic cost of foodgrain. Long distance transportation of foodgrain should only be relied onwhen the local production is deficit. Procurement at stable and remunerativeprices will give a boost to the production of cereals, pulses, millets and oilseedsand will especially benefit small farmers and farmers in dryland areas, sincepulses, oil seeds and millets require little water and other inputs. Banning theexport of foodgrain till malnutrition is minimal, disallowing the use of foodgrainfor manufacture of bio-fuels or liquor or other industrial use, and a moratoriumon the use of unknown, unsafe technologies like genetically modified seeds ingovernment food schemes are other measures that must be taken to ensure foodsecurity.

• Measures for women and children: While the Supreme Court orders havemade all services under the ICDS universal, the Bill talks of only universalsupplementary nutrition. Nutrition for adolescent girls, which are mandatoryunder the Surpeme Court order, has also been excluded. Other additions arenecessary such as improvement in quality of services provided through ICDS;proper provisions for management of all forms of malnutrition; universalmaternity entitlements at minimum wages and inflation-indexed; crèche facilitiesfor children of working women; mid-day meals for all children, including out of school children; safeguards against commercial interests and promotingdecentralisation: protection of rights of workers (who are presently highlyunderpaid and exploited) in food schemes.

• Other vulnerable groups: Pensions for the aged (which are part of theSupreme Court orders), single women and the disabled must be added. Servicesto migrants, homeless and destitute and the disabled have been left undefined.Starvation deaths and the protocol to deal with the same also need much moredefinition and detailing.

• Grievance Redress: The proposed grievance redress mechanism under theNFSB begins at the district level, which is too far away for people to effectivelyaccess. Instead, every office, right down to the Panchayat level, should have adesignated Grievance Redress Officer (GRO) with adequate authority to dispose of



complaints about any deficiency by an officer/functionary, in a specifiedtimeframe, as well as to fix responsibility and punish. A citizen’s charter of theservices people are to receive must be defined and publicised, with any violationof the charter being defined as constituting a grievance. Block-level facilitationcentres must also be started for registration of complaints. Offenses under theAct should be cognisable and non-bailable, with imprisonment and a fine which isrecovered from the public servant.

• Transparency and Accountability: Though the Bill has provisions dealing withtransparency and accountability, they are not sufficient. Too much of discretionhas been left to the Government to decide the modalities of inspection.Specifically, SMS alert systems may be set up and telephone lines dedicated todealing with issues/complaints on the PDS need to be put in place. Vigilancecommittees need to be created at the shop levels and they need to be givensufficient powers to monitor, as well as to recommend and ensure punitive andcorrective action. An important step that must be taken is to bring all informationunder the PDS, including the grain movement, procurement data, stocks in shopsand in transit and all off-take data in the public domain, by including them underSection IV of the Right to Information Act. Further, social audits need to beconducted mandatorily by the gram sabhas at the PDS shops, aganwaris, schools

and community feeding centres.

• Decentralisation: The NFSB 2011 gives sweeping powers to the CentralGovernment. These sections are clearly in violation of the federal system of governance as prescribed in the Indian Constitution. These include specifyingwhen different provisions of the Act come into force; prescribing PDS issue pricesunder Schedule I; determining the state-wise coverage of priority and generalhouseholds and prescribing procedures and criteria for identification; insisting onPDS reforms before covering general households; prescribing “type” and “nutritional standards” for cooked meals and take-home rations (for middaymeals, ICDS, etc.) under Schedule II. This includes the power to replace cookedmeals with “ready to eat meal or take-home ration”; prescribing mandatoryguidelines for all relevant schemes, as well as the sharing of costs between stateand central governments for specific schemes; prescribing the amount and terms

of the “food security allowance” to be paid by state governments in case of afailure of food entitlements; providing funds instead of foodgrain to stategovernments (“in case of short supply of foodgrain”) “in such manner as may beprescribed” etc. On the other hand, the gram panchayats and the local bodieshave been greatly curtailed. Special emphasis should be laid on giving powers tothe gram sabha and the general public to monitor the school meals, anganwaris,ration shops and community kitchens through the formation of vigilance andmonitoring committees with representation from women’s groups, active youth,dalits etc.

Food Bill Critique

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