Food Bill or Vote Bill: Implementation A Challenge

Finally the Food Security Bill has been cleared by Lok Sabha. It is a matter of time when the Bill becomes an Act that ensures to provide subsidized grain to the poor at the rate of Rs. 3 per kg rice, wheat at Rs. 2 per kg and coarse grain like Bajra and Jawar at the rate of Re. 1 per kg.

The purpose of the bill to provide food grains to the poor is laudable; few can dispute it. But the implementation of the scheme is not only a big challenge but it also will open flood gate of corruption where the millions of tons of food grains meant for the poor would be sold in open market, the beneficiaries of the scheme would not get it.

The government would supply 5 kg of food grain in a month to the beneficiaries of the scheme. Now can the policy makers and the government of the day explain how a person can sustain himself or herself in 5 kg of grain for the whole month?  The people for whom this scheme has been brought generally eat only twice a day or maximum three times a day. There is no refreshment of snacks in between the meals. They are mostly laborers and daily wage earners who burn lot of calories while working. If you divide 5 kg by 30 it comes out to be less than 170 grammes a day. That means a person would have to divide his quota of ration into two or three and then he will consume just 85 grammes of rice or wheat for one meal. The policy makers and the people running the government like the Prime Minister Manmoohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Mantok Singh Ahluwalia should not compare their intake of meal with an average working class Indian!

Had the government the will to act, it would have brought new legislation to enforce the existing supply chain of ration under Public Distribution System strictly; it would have taken care of the needy people of the country. Then there are states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh and Chhatisgarh where modified scheme of PDS provide rice and wheat to the people under BPL (Below the Poverty Line) at Re one a kilogram compared to Rs. 3 and Rs.2 a kilogram under the new Food Security Bill. The system is working well in these states. Where was then need to bring in the new legislation?

Burdened with scores of scams and corruption, the UPA Government finds itself at the receiving end. The people are angry. The Government has failed on every front, be it economy, industry and agriculture. The managers think that it was MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) that helped Congress win elections in 2009. This time it thinks the Food Security Bill will rescue the Party and help win the next general elections. This is not going to happen. It will take more than a year to make roll of beneficiaries who come under the scheme. Then it will depend how many people entitled to the subsidized grain get it through distribution system or by direct cash transfer.

In the mean time the food subsidy bill is going to rise to the tune of Rs, 1.30 lakh crores a year; thus increasing our fiscal deficit further. Only officials and middlemen are smiling, for 90 percent of the money would go into their pocket.

~R. K. Sinha