Dr. Parveen Kumar, Dr. Anil Kumar
The last two decades in the country have witnessed some landmark legislations aimed at empowering masses. These include Right to Education (RTE), Right to Information (RTI), Right to Work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and Right to Food under National Food Security Act (NFSA). This has been rightly called as the rights based-era and is a significant shift from the welfare-based approach. Among all these is National Food Security Act (NFSA) that gives everybody the Right to Food. The legislation entails legal entitlement of five kilogram of food grains per person per month at a highly subsidized rate of Re one per kilogram for coarse cereals, Rs two per kilogram for wheat and Rs three per kilogram for rice. It will cover two-third of the population. The act passed in July 2013 envisaged its roll out in the country within one year of its passage. Unfortunately this does not happened and many states took more time in preparing beneficiaries list, computerization of records and many other reasons took more than the prescribed time. Under the act seventy five per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population would be covered. The pregnant women and lactating mothers and children in the age group of six months to fourteen years are entitled to meals as per prescribed nutritional norms under Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and Mid-Day Meal (MDM) schemes. It also empowers women as eldest woman of the household of eighteen years of age or above is to be the head of the household for the purpose of issuing of ration cards.
The minister for Food and Civil Supplies Ram Vilas Paswan revealed that a whooping sum of Rs 1.4 lakh crore will have to be spend annually to provide highly subsidized food grains to 80 crore peoples as Food Security Law extends its coverage to the entire country after the two remaining states Tamil Nadu and Kerala decided to implement it from November. Remembering that the intended coverage under the act is 81.34 crore of population. The food grains have been allocated to all 36 states and nine union territories. It is here pertinent to mention that monthly allocation of food grains is about 45.5 lakh tonnes. The breakup of subsidy component means a sum of Rs 11,726 crore per month which will stand at about 1, 40, 700 crore annually. The two states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu had been seeking some more time to complete end-to-end computerization of Public Distribution System and seeding of Aadhar number of beneficiaries. Recently the food ministry had informed these states that the centre would supply food grains to them at minimum support price the derived prices for APL category instead of NFSA prescribed prices of rupees one , two and three for coarse cereals, wheat and rice respectively. This implied that these states would have to pay Rs 22.54 per kilogram for rice for their monthly allocation under Above Poverty Line as against Rs 8.30 that they are paying now. For Tamil Nadu it would have meant an additional expenditure of Rs 2,730 crore. The state is also incurring an expenditure of Rs 2,393 crore annually on its universal Public Distribution System.
The preparations are also ready for the new legislation with pan India coverage. The subsidy of Rs 1.4 lakh crore is an increase of budget allocation from Rs 1.32 lakh crore. As part of the preparations, Public Distribution System fair price shops are being automated for distribution of food grains through an electronic point of sale (e-POS), a device that authenticates the beneficiaries at the time of distribution and also electronically captures the quantity received, A recent report in the Financial Express revealed that of the 5 lakh odd fair price shops in the country 1.6 lakh have been equipped with electronic point of sale machines. The government has also so far linked 71 per cent of ration cards with Aadhar numbers and rest would be done at earliest. This computerization process has resulted in deletion of about 2.62 crore bogus ration cards. Grains are also delivered to dealers at their doorsteps and also the dealer margin is also hiked.
The new law has been under criticism from time-to-time and the issue is that of affordability. An amount of Rs 1.4 lakh crore annually is not an ordinary figure. An item published in the Business Line on March 21, 2013 has stated that Food Security Bill will torpedo Budget. Indian Express on March 19, 2013 had claimed that the Bill has a fundamental flaw that places an unbearable burden and distorts agriculture. Some even feared of the emergence of a government monopoly in the grain market. There is another issue of malnourishment. It is a general perception that the subsidized food grains will reduce malnourishment because the population will consume more food grains and thereby more calories. We should not forget that malnutrition is as a result of many things including micronutrient deficiency unawareness about proper nutrition and of course poor sanitation. Studies have reveal a disconnect between food security and nutritional security. In a recent study on 385 households in three extremely poor districts of Koraput, Bolangir and Nayangarh was done by Seema Bathla and Bal Krishan Negi of the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, JNU. The former two districts are in the KBK region which is regarded as most backward and Nayangarh is in the non KBK region of Odisha. The districts in KBK region while those in the non-KBK region have a targeted one. It was found that there was a high incidence of under nutrition and malnutrition in the selected districts. The Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) has a greater access to PDS but the problem of undernourishment is more serious among them. Thus there is a need to do away with this food and nutritional security disconnect. Under the NFSA there is provision of one additional coarse cereal viz millet along with wheat and rice which can go a long way in ensuring nutritional security of the poor households. It is also important to include pulses so as to improve adequate intake of proteins.
The Act also expanded the coverage from forty four of the population under the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) to sixty seven per cent of the population with a reduction in the subsidized amount from seven kilogram per person to five kilogram per person for all except the very poor i. e who are under AAY. Now let us have a look at the statistics. The amount of grain commitment by the central government has not changed much. The additional food grain commitments are principally because of other welfare schemes that include maternity benefits and school feeding programmes but the magnitudes are not large. Ashok Gulati and his associates also believe that the new law will also necessitate large investments in food production. Moreover this is a necessity also and need to be done to increase the productivity and production keeping in mind the burgeoning population.
(The writers are from Advanced Centre for Rainfed Agriculture (ACRA), SKUAST-J, Rakh Dhiansar)
