Food Security Bill

Important Provisions of the Bill:

Ø The Bill proposes food grain entitlements for up to 75 percent of the rural and up to 50 percent of the urban population.  Of these, at least 46 percent of the rural and 28 percent of the urban population will be designated as priority households.  The rest will be designated as general households.

Ø Priority households will be entitled to 7 kg of subsidized food grains per person per month.  General households will be entitled to at least 3 kg.

Ø The central government will determine the percentage of people in each state that will belong to the priority and general groups.  State governments will identify households that belong to these groups.   

Ø The Bill proposes meal entitlements to specific groups.  These include: pregnant women and lactating mothers, children between the ages of six months and 14 years, malnourished children, disaster affected persons, and destitute, homeless and starving persons.

Ø Grievance redressal mechanisms will be set up at the district, state, and central levels of government.

Challenges for the Food Security Bill:

Ø The Bill proposes reforms to the Targeted Public Distribution System.

Ø The Bill classifies beneficiaries into three groups. The process of identifying beneficiaries and placing them into these groups may lead to large inclusion and exclusion errors.

Ø Several entitlements and the grievance redressal structure would require state legislatures to make adequate budgetary allocations.  Implementation of the Bill may be affected if states do not pass requisite allocations in their budgets or do not possess adequate funds.

Ø The Bill does not provide a rationale for the cut-off numbers prescribed for entitlements to priority and general households.

Ø The grievance redressal framework may overlap with that provided in the Citizens’ Charter Bill that is pending in Parliament.

Ø Schedule III of the Bill specifies goals which may not be directly related to food security.  It is unclear why these have been included in the Bill.

Ø The Bill provides similar definitions for starving and destitute persons.  However, entitlements to the two groups differ.

What is the Need of such a bill?

Ø there is more than 8 crore tons of cereals in the FCI godowns which will increase to become 10 crore ton after the Kharif crops are harvested and procured. On the other hand, there are children, adults and aged people who are hungry and malnourished.

Ø Activists of an organisation working for food security, Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan appealed the government to provide subsidised cereals for all and asked for an effective National Food security legislation.

Ø Demanded from the government to remove the distinction of APL-BPL and open the doors of the godowns to distribute the grains to needy.

INCLUSIVE PDS

Ø Tamil Nadu has gone all the way to a universal PDS, every household there is entitled to 20 kg of rice every month, that too free of cost.

Ø Other States that have made significant moves towards a universal or near-universal PDS (at least in rural areas) include Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Orissa, and Rajasthan.

IMPACT ON POVERTY:

Ø Based on these implicit subsidy calculations, it is possible to estimate the impact of PDS on rural poverty — by adding the implicit subsidy to the explicit NSS estimate of Monthly Per Capita Expenditure (MPCE) for each sample household.

Ø Using NSS data for 2009-10, it turns out that the PDS (more precisely, the foodgrain component of the PDS) reduces the Tendulkar poverty gap by around 18 per cent at the national level. This is a moderate achievement, but what is more interesting than the national average is the contrast between States.

Ø In Tamil Nadu, the PDS reduces the Tendulkar poverty gap by more than 50 per cent. Other States where the PDS has a large impact on rural poverty include Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh (about 40 per cent), and also Himachal Pradesh and Kerala (around 35 per cent).