[The bill is a modest
initiative. It consolidates various food-related programs and entitlements that
have made gradual headway during the last decade. Provisions of the bill
dealing with food grain entitlements under the public distribution system have
grabbed most of the attention. Children’s entitlements, however, are possibly
more important. These include cooked midday meals for all school-going children
and nutritious food (either a cooked meal or a take-home ration) for all
children below the age of 6. These child nutrition programs are already in
place; they are mandatory under Supreme Court orders. Permanent legal
entitlements could strengthen and energize these initiatives.]
By Jean Drèze
 |
| Rajesh Kumar Singh/Associated Press |
The right to food is finally becoming a
lively political issue in India. Aware of the forthcoming national elections in
2014, political parties are competing to demonstrate – or at least proclaim —
their commitment to food security. In a country where endemic undernutrition
has been accepted for too long as natural, this is a breakthrough of sorts.
The rhetoric, however,
is not always matched by understanding of the issues, let alone action. The
National Food Security Bill taken up by Parliament in December 2011 in
pursuance of electoral promises made by India’s governing coalition, the United
Progressive Alliance, is at the heart of the current debate over food security.
The bill was to be put to vote during the last session of Parliament, along
with a series of amendments based on the report of a parliamentary standing
committee. Opposition parties, however, continuously disrupted the proceedings
under one pretext or another.
Exasperated by this
obstruction, and quite possibly hoping to win votes, the government recently
promulgated the National Food Security Ordinance 2013. The ordinance
effectively activates the bill, but it must be ratified by Parliament within
six weeks of its first sitting or else the bill will lapse. The use of
emergency powers to promulgate this ordinance is being criticized as
undemocratic, and rightly so, but most political parties bear some
responsibility for this outcome.
The bill is a modest
initiative. It consolidates various food-related programs and entitlements that
have made gradual headway during the last decade. Provisions of the bill
dealing with food grain entitlements under the public distribution system have
grabbed most of the attention. Children’s entitlements, however, are possibly
more important. These include cooked midday meals for all school-going children
and nutritious food (either a cooked meal or a take-home ration) for all
children below the age of 6. These child nutrition programs are already in
place; they are mandatory under Supreme Court orders. Permanent legal
entitlements could strengthen and energize these initiatives.
The bill also provides
for maternity benefits – 1,000 rupees ($16) per month for six months — for all
pregnant women. This is a small step, and since the benefits are not indexed to
inflation, their real value could erode very quickly. Nevertheless, the
principle of universal maternity benefits is important and provides a useful
foothold for further action.
The bill is
effectively what remains of bolder proposals initially discussed at the National
Advisory Council. The council’s early drafts of the bill included many
provisions that were quietly dropped, one by one, first by the council itself
and later by the government: social security pensions, special entitlements for
vulnerable groups, community kitchens and strong accountability measures, among
others.
Ironically, even as
the central government pruned and diluted the council’s proposals, the eastern
state of Chhattisgarh, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the main opposition
party, built on them and prepared its own Chhattisgarh Food Security Act,
enacted in December 2012. Chhattisgarh’s much stronger legislation is in place
and a recent survey by the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi suggests
that food-related programs in Chhattisgarh are quite effective. This experience
in one of India’s poorest states helps to dispel the notion that the food
security proposals are impractical or unaffordable.
Some provisions in the
bill are based on considerable experience and evidence. The value and
effectiveness of India’s school meal program are reasonably well established.
The program, inspired by Tamil Nadu’s pioneering initiatives, covers more than
100 million children and has steadily improved over time. In several states,
for instance, the school-meal menu now includes eggs, a very valuable source of
animal protein for growing children. In Tamil Nadu, schoolchildren get an egg
every day. This is not a trivial matter in a country where millions of poor
children rarely get a chance to eat an egg.
Several studies have
documented the wide-ranging benefits of school meals in India, from higher
school attendance and better child nutrition to remunerative employment for
rural women and the erosion of caste barriers. The case for a permanent school
meal program under the law is widely accepted.
The controversial
parts of the bill relate to the Public Distribution System. Food commodities,
mainly rice and wheat, have been distributed at subsidized prices for a long
time to Indian households, according to the type of ration card they possess:
A.P.L. (above poverty line) and B.P.L. (below poverty line). The bulk of food
subsidies are meant to reach households in the latter category, which comprises
about one-third of the population. But the process of targeting these
households has proved very cumbersome, unreliable and divisive. At least three
national surveys show that about half of all poor households in rural India do
not have a B.P.L. card. Further, as the economist Amartya Sen pointed out 20 years
ago, “benefits meant exclusively for the poor often end up being poor
benefits.” This is one reason why the performance of the Public Distribution
System has been far from satisfactory in many states.
Other states, however,
have dropped the distinction between households above and below the poverty
line and moved toward a more inclusive approach. In Tamil Nadu, the food
distribution system covers everyone and works very well. Other states that have
also moved toward a more inclusive system in recent years include Andhra
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan, among others.
All of them have combined this move with other reforms of the Public
Distribution System, and the results have been impressive.
Chhattisgarh’s
experience is particularly interesting because it used to have a very
inefficient and corrupt system. It was turned around in a few years based on a
clear political decision to make it work. Today, a large majority of rural
households in Chhattisgarh are entitled to 35 kilograms (77 pounds) of rice
every month at a nominal price. By all accounts, distribution is highly
regular, and the system makes a major contribution to economic security in
rural areas. There is a crucial lesson here for the national food security
bill.
Indeed, the bill can
be seen as an opportunity to extend these achievements across the country.
Under the bill, 75 percent of the rural population and 50 percent of the urban
population will be entitled five kilograms of grains (rice, wheat or millets)
per person per month at a nominal price. This means that about half of the
recipients’ grain requirements will be taken care of by the Public Distribution
System. Further, the roadmap for system reforms that has emerged from recent
experience is partly included in the bill.
However, the bill has
many flaws as far as the Public Distribution System is concerned. For instance,
the identification of eligible households is left to the discretion of the
government. In the absence of clear eligibility criteria, no one is really
entitled to anything as a matter of right; this defeats the purpose of having a
law. Similarly, the overnight imposition of per-capita food entitlements on a
system that is currently based on household entitlements is likely to be very
disruptive. The promulgation of an ordinance, unfortunately, severely
constricts (without precluding) further discussion of these and related issues
in Parliament.
Media reports give the
impression that the bill involves a major expansion of the Public Distribution
System. In fact, it is more a restructuring than an expansion, as aggregate
food grain allocations will remain much the same. The distribution, however,
will change, with poorer states getting more and poor households being at much
lower risk of exclusion. And the current food grain quota for households above
the poverty line, which has become a huge, corruption-ridden dumping ground for
excess food stocks in recent years, will be much better utilized.
Some of the criticisms
of the bill are a trifle ill-informed. Many critics cite wildly exaggerated
estimates of the costs of the bill and barely consider the economic benefits.
Others cite a Planning Commission of India report that found more than half of
distributed food grains end up in the black market. That particular report was
published in 2005 and is based on data collected in the late 1990s. Much has
changed in the meantime, even if corruption in the Public Distribution System
remains an important issue.
A more pertinent
criticism is that the Public Distribution System is expensive and that cash
transfers would serve much the same purpose at lower cost. In some
circumstances, cash transfers are certainly appropriate. Cash-based social
security pensions for widows and the elderly are doing relatively well in India
and deserve to be expanded.
However, there are
many good reasons to be skeptical of a hasty transition from food subsidies to
cash transfers. The infrastructure required for mass transfers in cash would
take a long time to build. The Public Distribution System, on the other hand,
is in place, and huge food grain stocks — more than 80 million tons and growing
— are available, so why not make good use of them without delay?
In any case, the bill
does not preclude a transition to cash transfers if and when they prove to work
better than food subsidies – not just in theory but also on the ground. The
immediate issue is not “cash versus food,” but to put in place an effective
system of income support and social security. Leaving poor people to their own devices
is neither socially just nor smart economic policy.
The biggest challenge
is to build a serious political backing for food security, as has already
happened to a limited extent in specific states. Under the cover of supporting
the bill, opposition parties seem to be trying to scuttle it, out of fear that
it will help the United Progressive Alliance to stay in power in the next
national elections. The government’s own commitment to the bill is not entirely
clear. A section of the governing coalition certainly wants it, as seen in the
ordinance approved last week, but four years of dilly-dallying are hard to
understand without an element of internal resistance.
Finally, the food
security bill is a fraction of what is required to tackle India’s enormous
nutrition problems. The battle for the right to food is far from over.
Jean Drèze is a
development economist and visiting professor at Allahabad University. He is a
co-author, with Amartya Sen, of “An Uncertain Glory: India and Its
Contradictions.”
