By Arindam Ghosh-Dastidar
THE United Progressive Alliance government is radiating its weakness on the Food Security Bill, close to three years after having floated what must still be a pie in the sky. The more the government fiddles, the more it is that people will suffer. While a parliamentary standing committee chews over the legislation, minister Sharad Pawar has laboured the obvious, but one that might yet defer, if not derail, the passage of the Bill. Considering his consistent opposition to the legislation, it will not be easy for the agriculture minister to dispel the impression that he is intent on throwing a spanner in the works after it was introduced in Parliament. He could have spared aam aadmi, most importantly those below the poverty line, the knowledge that the public distribution system is a gigantic public sector disaster.
The PDS is the matrix on which must develop food security, but it remains monstrously inefficient. The logical corollary, in the minister’s reckoning, is that the food security law will come a cropper because the distribution network is decrepit. Theoretically, he is right. Yet the reflection is on Mr Pawar, who has been the agriculture minister for the past eight years of the United Progressive Alliance government. His principal objection during the prolonged discourse on food was to the subsidy issue, production levels and the percentage of the populace entitled to this welfare handout. Now that the nitty-gritty has loosely been settled and the Bill introduced, the minister, a member of the GoM, has raised a point of order that ought to have been settled long ago. Wasn’t it his duty as the agriculture minister to revamp the PDS and transform it to an honest and dependable welfare network? Indeed, this revamp ought to have been effected in parallel with the rarefied discourse at various levels ~ the Planning Commission, the National Advisory Council, the Group of Ministers and the cabinet as a whole.
On the face of it, the minister has raised a seemingly valid reason; equally, he has presided over the PDS decline, thereby serving the interests of unscrupulous stakeholders. It is an open question whether the government will reflect on the eleventh-hour dissent on the part of a coalition partner. Sonia Gandhi, as head of the NAC, is unlikely to relent. At best, the government can follow a two-pronged praxis, go ahead with the Bill and effect a drastic restructuring of the PDS, regardless of whether it ruffles the feathers of certain parties. At worst, it could defer the passage of the legislation further still. Between the Bill’s introduction (last December) and its passage (present indefinite), Mr Pawar has made a last-ditch attempt to test the waters. And the issues raised can’t be an afterthought.
Shifty and weak, this government, one can politely say, is still finding its feet. There appears to be a glaring disconnect in the perceptions of the ministers of food and agriculture, almost a caricature of governance. With striking promptitude, food minister KP Thomas is anxious to dispel the impression of differences with Mr Pawar. However tottering the PDS, Mr Thomas has conveyed the point that it will not be replaced by cash transfer. Much as the agriculture minister would plump for the latter as a relatively convenient option, the fact must remain that cash is no substitute for food except in the wake of a natural calamity or if "geographical conditions are adverse", as the Bill stipulates. Indeed, distribution of foodgrain with cash has decidedly been rejected by the social activists of the NAC. It is a cacophonous chord that emanates from the two crucial ministries of food and agriculture. The disconnect is symptomatic of the overwhelming confusion since the proposal was advanced by UPA-II. Leakages in PDS will have to be plugged, a task in which both ministers have a critical role to play.
As Mr Thomas cools his heels for a meeting with Mamata Banerjee, it becomes increasingly obvious that food is no less a topic of federal contestation. This mirrors the Centre-State discord over a raft of other issues with a bearing on public policy ~ from sharing river water with Bangladesh to the tackling of terror
The draft of the Food Security Act may be in place close to three years after the pledge by UPA-II, but the Planning Commission’s redefinition of poverty remains an ever so thorny issue. If the misadventure over the Lokpal Bill is a case-study in parliamentary fiasco, the concurrence of the states where the Congress’ allies are in power cannot readily be taken for granted. Not least because of the provision that bars states from providing subsidised foodgrain to those excluded from the Centre’s list of beneficiaries, indeed those who are deemed to be poor in Yojana Bhavan’s reckoning. Even before the Bill was introduced, the ruling AIADMK in Tamil Nadu and the JD(U) in Bihar were vehement in their opposition to this provision. Bengal’s Trinamul Congress is yet to spell out its stand, but the Chief Minister might well be loath to accept the Centre’s cap on the numbers that are entitled to eat. Her party’s relations with the Congress have become dire for a variety of reasons. The poor remain an indeterminate segment in volatile Junglemahal as indeed in the rest of the state, most importantly the poverty-stricken belt of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia. The passage of the legislation may not be easy if all the allies are ranged against the provision that has a terribly important bearing on those acutely entitled to food and its security. In the manner of the Lokpal Bill, the Food Bill will be a test for the federal engagement. Indeed, this will be yet another test in recent months after the Teesta water-sharing agreement with Bangladesh turned out to be a non-starter last September.
Tamil Nadu and Bihar seem poised to go off at a tangent, with the government in Chennai making it clear that it wants to continue with its universal coverage scheme, a critical engagement that no administration can afford to get diluted. The national legislation, at another remove, has skirted the issue of universal PDS. It is an open question whether the viewpoint of the states, where the Congress is not in power, will be taken care of. The dominant party at the Centre is yet to define the parameters that will determine the selection of beneficiaries. It is quite obvious that the party wants to control the numbers across the country.
The draft was formalised after a series of debates among the principal participants ~ the Centre, the GoM, the Planning Commission, the National Advisory Council and the States. But the norms to formulate the BPL census cut-off are yet to be finalised with the non-Congress states. In terms of a critical parameter, the Food Bill remains half-baked. The target group has waited long enough. The law on life’s essential must fructify. The unitary/ federal contruct and the spectrum of views are of lesser moment to the perdurably poor. Dirigisme is at stake. Food security can’t be enmeshed in ad hocism, dithering and egalitarian cant. (The Statesman/ANN)
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