Former rural development secretary NC Saxena has been appointed member of the National Advisory Council (NAC) for the second time. In an interview with Nistula Hebbar, he talks of the food security Bill, rights of tribals and his take on who constitute the poor in India.

In the second innings as member in the National Advisory Council, what would be your area of focus?

The food security Bill, of course, and issues related to tribal development and displacement.

When it comes the Bill, there is a view that the Suresh Tendulkar Committee’s estimates on poverty would be accepted.

If the government has veered around to this view, that is fine. The main issue is that food security for all is the main objective of the Bill. Can this be achieved when you only look at the poor? The Tendulkar Committee puts the estimate of the number of poor to roughly 37% of the population. But there is also a huge chunk of those just above that line who are also around 30% who spend Rs 12-15 per capita per day. This chunk of population should also be covered under the Bill albeit this can be done partially, by fixing their entitlements at say 15 kilograms of grain. The top 30% of the population should be kept completely out of the loop.

I also feel that all the major programmes related to food security, like food work (wherever it may be), the Mid Day Meal scheme, and the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) should be collapsed into one overarching legislation.

What about your own committee’s estimation of poverty?

Well, first of all, we never did an enumeration. When you talk of poverty estimates there are two things, one, who is the poor, and secondly, how many are poor. Our mandate was to look at who were the really poor. According to government of India, all those who could not procure 2400 calories per capita per month in rural areas were considered poor. This was in the 1970s, with the cost of it is pegged at Rs 49 per month per capita. Later, the government of India simply computed calorific count along with inflation to arrive at a particular figure. Now, when food prices rise over the rate of inflation, there is an underestimation of poverty. We said that by applying urban benchmarks of 2100 calories to rural areas, we still arrive at a figure of about 50% of the people below poverty line. But it was not an enumeration of the number of the poor.

There are a couple of state governments namely, Bihar and Delhi which are also toying with the idea of direct cash subsidy to the poor. What is your take on this?

As a pilot project, one can always try a new idea out. If you want to make it more widespread, there are one or two problems. The first problem is what is to be done with the MSP grain. In 2008-09 alone procurement has been around 60 million tonne. There has to be therefore a mechanism to dispose of this grain.

The second thing is that in countries which have tried it, like Brazil and Mexico, there were three conditions which facilitated this. Everyone had a Unique Identification number. Secondly, the banking structure has to be widespread. Thirdly, people should have debit cards, where they bypass bank branches and directly remove money from ATMs. However, corruption is a major problem. For example, like in the Indira Awaas Yojana, leakage is between 35-50%.

You said that tribal development will also be a focus. The Tribal Land Rights Act was supposed to ameliorate a lot of the problems faced by them especially in forested areas. Has that had an effect?

It has helped partially. I recently went to Chhattisgarh, which is supposed to have a good record in terms of settling disputes under the Act, but even there many people are left out. The government of Orissa has also done some studies on this and the results are of partial success.

Is there any hope of seeing the amendments to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 being made and a rehabilitation Bill being enacted.

The Land Acquisition Act of 1894 was amended in 1984 and was in fact made even more anti-people. When I was secretary rural development, I presented a draft Bill for rehabilitation in 1992. We do need this Bill to be cleared soon. Since land is on the concurrent list, an effort to involve the states can also be made. When you change land use from agriculture to industry, the per unit employment of land increases. This will bring down resistance and resentment among the local population. Growth without this inclusion is worthless.