Billed as the most ambitious social programme of UPA-II, the Bill to provide a national food safety net to all Indians is inching closer to a legislation. After months of delay in finalizing the basic blueprint of the Universal Food Security Bill as it shuttled among ministries, the reconstituted National Advisory Council (NAC) chaired by Congress President Sonia Gandhi has cleared a pruned version of the Bill. The Bill is the first piece of legislation that the NAC, that acts as the over arching advisory body for the UPA government on social sector issues has dealt with.
The draft cleared by the body says almost all residents of one-fourth of the administrative blocks in the country will get 35 kg of foodgrain per month, priced at Rs 3 per kg. This means in the first phase about 200 districts out of 626 districts will be covered by the scheme. The plan will ramp up the per person availablity of foodgrains at 436 gm per day, estiamted for the year 2008, as per ministry of food estimates. It has declined by 2% since 2006.
In the rest of the country, a little less than 50% of the population would get subsidized foodgrains, with those at the bottom of the pyramid, the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other socially and occupationally disadvantaged? a category that will include HIV patients, homeless, destitute, single women households and others?being included automatically.
This means the biggest revamp of the public distribution system or PDS for making available essentially rice and wheat at state controlled price, set up in the course of the second world war.
As part of the Bill, the Mid-Day Meal scheme that provides food to school students and the Integrated Child Development Scheme would also be turned into legal entitlements. The NAC has also said their scope should be expanded to include destitutes, aged, disabled and infirm adults as well as single women and the homeless. The Bill should also have provision for setting up community kitchens. The debate on whether India needs and afford a universal public distribution system, from the current targeted public distribution system and what should or should not be part of the Food Security Bill has thrown up divergent opinions. Whatever the conclusion, it is one of the most massive pieces of social engineering seen ever in history. As policy makers debate on whether universalisation of PDS is feasible or not, one thing is certain that India?s food procurement and production must gear up to face added pressure from new social schemes.
This fact was also brought forward by C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister?s Economic Advisory Council at a recent meeting of state food secretaries on revamping the PDS. He said that despite the desirability of such an arrangement (universal coverage of PDS under the Food Security Bill), it is pretty much impossible at present given the current level of production of foodgrain at 218 million tonne.
Figures of the food ministry show that while total production of paddy in the last agricultural year has been around 89 million tonne, procurement has hovered at around 25 million tonne. In other words, Food Corporation of India and state agencies have managed to procure just about 27% of the total paddy produced in the country.
Similarly, for wheat, while the production has oscillated between 65 million to 80 million tonne in the last 10 years, average procurement has been almost 24% of the total arrivals. Mind it, all this is time minimum support price of foodgrains kept on rising.
From 2002-2003, minimum support price of common grade paddy has been risen by 82%, that of Grade ?A? paddy by 77% and wheat by 75%.
As the government procures foodgrains at the minimum support price, it shows that despite best efforts there is a limit to which foodgrains produced by farmers can be procured by state agencies. ?We can not go beyond the current level procurement as any increase in procurement would result in increase in prices,? food and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar recently said.
A simple calculation shows that the country would need to have almost 100 million tonnes of foodgrains in its stocks to run a massive programme as universal public distribution system in all administrative blocks, across the length and breadth of the country.
On top of this, foodgrain will also be needed for other social sector schemes like ICDS and also for intervening in the market as and when prices flare up. Though, many would argue that social obligation needs to be fulfilled and food security bill is the answer to India?s chronic hunger and poverty, but the question is does our current and even future agriculture production cope with the increased demand.
