Detracting from entitlements

Detracting from entitlements

Brinda Karat

The National Advisory Council's proposals on the Food Security Bill represent a bad deal for the poor.

The struggle for an effective and equitable Food Security Bill (FSB) has received a setback with the disappointing proposals put forward by the National Advisory Council. There is a disturbing disjuncture between what is being claimed and the actual implications of the proposals. Indeed it may be said that the NAC proposals create new discriminations.

The most basic requirement for a legal guarantee for food security is the replacement of the present targeted system by a universal system of public distribution. India had such a system till the advent of neo-liberal policies in the 1990s when targeting started. The NAC proposal actually expands the sphere of targeting in at least four ways.

Geographical targeting: According to the proposal, “…initial universalisation in one-fourth of the most disadvantaged districts or blocks in the first year is recommended, where every household is entitled to receive 35 kg per month of foodgrains at Rs. 3 a kg.” This will translate into around 150 districts out of 640. This proposal actually introduces a new discrimination among those who are equally poor, on the basis of where they were born and where they live. For example, an unorganised worker in the construction industry who does not possess a BPL (below poverty line) card, would in the 150 districts selected be eligible for the entitlement. But if she lives in a village outside these selected districts, even though she may be in the same economic category she will not be eligible. This is legally sanctioned discrimination based on geographical location, and can be challenged in a court of law.

Also, who will determine the list of districts? Will it mean that some States, for example Kerala, may be left out in the first year altogether as was done in the case of the National Rural Health Mission, in this case because they do not fit the definition of “most disadvantaged”? Thus the question of identification of the “most disadvantaged” may itself be discriminatory against States. The NAC is overlooking the fact that the “most disadvantaged people” often live in the “least disadvantaged districts.”

New category of socially vulnerable groups: What happens in the remaining districts? Will the “initial universalisation” be extended to them over time?

The proposal says: “In the remaining districts/blocks… there shall be a guarantee of 35 kg of foodgrains per household at Rs. 3 a kg for all socially vulnerable groups including SC/STs…” This means that unlike in the 150 districts where all households will have access, in the rest of the districts, which form the majority of rural India, it will not be universal but targeted for socially vulnerable groups. Who will be included, apart from the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes? What about the minorities and the most backward castes? Will occupation be a criterion for inclusion in the category of socially vulnerable groups? Will the 77 per cent of the workforce in the unorganised sector with a spending power of less than Rs. 20 and who are plagued by fluctuating incomes, be included? In any case, by differentiating between the 150 districts and the rest of India, by introducing the category of socially vulnerable groups, the NAC has retained the APL/BPL divide, albeit with a different name and different criteria.

Targeting out others: The proposal says that for all others (other than the category of socially vulnerable groups) the guarantee will be 25 kg “at an appropriate price.” This is the crux of the issue — lower entitlement at a higher price. In fact, the issue of differentiated allocations and higher prices for the APL sections is what the Planning Commission has been pushing for — except that the Commission has been more forthright about its aims than the NAC. In a discussion paper for the Empowered Group of Ministers looking into the food security legislation, the Commission said: “We can give the APL sections a legal entitlement [later it was specifically mentioned as 25 kg] but at a non-subsidised price. We should calibrate an APL price linked to MSP [minimum support price given to farmers for foodgrain] in such a way that the annual APL offtake is around 10 million tonnes or so. If there is excess grain availability, as at present, there can be a discount from this price to encourage a larger offtake. If not, the discount should be withdrawn.” It is precisely this utterly cynical manipulation by the Planning Commission of a popular demand to suit government requirements that the NAC wants to project as universalisation. This is unfortunate, to say the least.

Category to be excluded: The proposed law will legally exclude certain categories, the details of which are yet to be worked out. If this means the income-tax paying category, there can be no objection to it. But more details are required.

Time-frame

The NAC has not suggested any time-frame for implementation except for the 150 districts. The proposal says that the “differentiated entitlements… would progressively be expanded to all rural areas in the country over a reasonable period of time.” Who will define “reasonable”? It has been reported that the NAC's thinking is guided by the pattern set by the staggered implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. This is a misplaced comparison. First, for the NREGS the Left parties had ensured that there was a fixed time-frame of five years with no switch-off clause. Equally important, the NREGS was a new work-based right that required a certain amount of experience in implementation. The PDS not only exists but the infirmities in the targeted system in different States have had a negative impact on food security rights. People all over the country are affected by food inflation and the consequent food insecurity. Thus there is no basis for any staggered implementation as far as an urgent issue such as food is concerned, more so since India has huge buffer stocks.

Denial

There is no mention of the Antyodaya category. Elimination of this category would mean 2.5 crore families being deprived of their existing entitlement of wheat at Rs. 2 a kg and having to pay Re. 1 more. This is unacceptable. In States such as West Bengal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand, BPL card-holders get rice at Rs. 2 a kg, and in some States at Re. 1 a kg. These States have also expanded the numbers of the BPL population. Surely a Central Act must expand on existing entitlements and not detract from them. If the State governments implement the pricing suggested by the NAC of Rs. 3 a kg, crores of families will find that the Central Food Security Act actually increases their foodgrain costs. State governments are already facing a severe resources crunch. This will make it more difficult for them.

Urban poor

As far as the identification and categorisation of the urban population is concerned, it is clear that targeting is going to be the basis. Households eligible for 35 kg at Rs. 3 are to be identified on the basis of criteria developed by the Hashim Committee. Oddly, the NAC has accepted the recommendations of the Hashim Committee even before the Report has been written. Usually one would like to examine recommendations before accepting them — for which they have to be written in the first place.

The urban poor have been neglected in the proposals. There are no recommendations to give a legal backup to nutrition schemes such as Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and midday meal programmes, nor are any other essential commodities included in the ambit of the food security system.

The NAC has compromised on the basic issue of universalisation. What it is suggesting is a differently targeted system. An opportunity to take the struggle forward into official institutions such as the NAC has been lost. The NAC should have held out in the knowledge that in any case what it is suggesting may be further whittled down.

(Brinda Karat, MP, is a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).)

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Pre-requisites for sustainable food security

Pre-requisites for sustainable food security

M.S. Swaminathan

The goal of food for all can be achieved only through greater and integrated attention to production, procurement, preservation and public distribution.

The President, in her address to Parliament on June 4, 2009, announced: “My Government proposes to enact a new law — the National Food Security Act — that will provide a statutory basis for a framework which assures food security for all. Every family below the poverty line in rural as well as urban areas will be entitled, by law, to 25 kg of rice or wheat per month at Rs. 3 per kg. This legislation will also be used to bring about broader systemic reform in the public distribution system.”

Since then, various arms of the government as well as civil society organisations have been working to help redeem this pledge. The National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Sonia Gandhi recently provided a broad framework to achieve the goal of food for all and forever. The NAC's suggestions include the swift initiation of programmes to insulate pregnant and nursing mothers, infants in the age group of zero to three, and other disadvantaged citizens, from hunger and malnutrition. Such special nutrition support programmes may need annually about 10 million tonnes of foodgrains. The NAC has stressed that in the design of the delivery system there should be a proper match between challenge and response, as for example, the starting of community kitchens in urban areas to ensure that the needy do not go to bed hungry. Pregnant women should get priority.

The NAC has proposed a phased programme of implementation of the goal of universal public distribution system. This will start with either one-fourth of the districts or blocks in 2011-12 and cover the whole country by 2015, on lines similar to that adopted for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MGNREGP). This will provide time to develop infrastructure such as grain storage facilities and Village Knowledge Centres and the issue of Household Entitlements Passbooks. The NAC is developing inputs for the proposed Food Security Act covering legal entitlements and enabling provisions based on the principle of common but differentiated entitlements, taking into account the unmet needs of the underprivileged.

The food security legislation will be the most significant among the laws enacted by Parliament. It will mark the fulfillment of Mahatma Gandhi's call for a hunger-free India. It should lend itself to effective implementation, in letter and spirit. This will call for attention to four pre-requisites. These are food production, procurement, preservation and public distribution.

Production: India faces a formidable task on the food production front. Production should be adequate to provide balanced diet for over 1.2 billion persons. Over a billion cattle and other farm animals need feed and fodder. The recommendations of the National Commission on Farmers (NCF) made in five reports submitted to the Minister of Agriculture between 2004 and 2006, and the National Policy for Farmers placed in Parliament in November 2007 need to be implemented. These provide a road map to strengthen the ecological-economic foundations for sustainable advances in productivity and production and impart an income orientation to farming, helping bridge the gap between potential and actual yields and income in farming systems. Since land and water are shrinking resources, and climate change is a real threat, the NCF has urged the spread of conservation and climate-resilient farming. A conservation-cultivation-consumption-commerce chain should be promoted in every block. This will call for technological and skill upgradation of farming practices. Methods to achieve a small farm management revolution that will result in higher productivity, profitability and stability under irrigated and rain-fed conditions are detailed.

The widening of the food basket through the inclusion of nutritious millets, the mainstreaming of nutritional considerations in the National Horticulture Mission, and the consumption of salt fortified with iron and iodine will help reduce chronic protein-energy under-nutrition and hidden hunger caused by the dietary deficiency of micronutrients such as iron, iodine, zinc, Vitamin A and Vitamin B12. A sustainable food security system can be developed only with home-grown food, not imports.

Procurement: Procurement should cover not only wheat and rice but also jowar, bajra, ragi, minor millets and pulses. When India started the High Yielding Varieties Programme in 1966, jowar, bajra and maize along with rice and wheat were included in the food basket in order to keep it wide. Community Grain Banks operated under the social oversight of Gram Sabhas will facilitate the purchase and storage of local grain. Farmers are now worried that the government may lower the minimum support price (MSP) to reduce the subsidy burden. This will kill the food security system. The MSP should be according to the NCF formula of C2 (that is, the total cost of production) plus 50 per cent. The actual procurement price should be fixed at the time of harvest, taking into account the escalation in the cost of inputs like diesel since the time the MSP was announced. Unlike in developed countries, where hardly 2 per cent to 3 per cent of the people are farmers, the majority of consumers (over 60 per cent) in India are farmers. Their income security is vital for food security.

Preservation: Safe storage of procured grain is the weakest link in the food security chain. India is yet to develop a national grid of modern grain silos. Post-harvest losses are high in foodgrains and in perishable commodities such as vegetables and fruits. A Rural Godown Scheme was initiated in 1979, but it is yet to take off. The government called off the “Save Grain” campaign some years ago, ending a relevant programme in the context of food security.

Public Distribution: The strengths and weaknesses of India's public distribution system, the world's largest, are being discussed widely. Corruption and leakages are widespread. There are States such as Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Chhattisgarh where the PDS is being operated efficiently. The challenge is to learn from the models and convert the unique into the universal.

In the ultimate analysis, what is relevant for human health and productivity is nutrition-security at the level of each child, woman and man. India has to shift from viewing food security at the aggregate level to ensuring nutrition-security at the level of each individual. This will call for concurrent attention being paid to availability, access and absorption. Indian agriculture is in a state of crisis, both from the economic and ecological points of view. Unless attention is paid to soil health care and enhancement, water conservation and efficient use, adoption of climate resilient technologies, timely supply of needed inputs at affordable prices, credit and insurance, and producer-oriented marketing, a higher growth rate in agriculture cannot be realised.

In the area of access, the MGNREGP and the Food Security Act that seeks to ensure 35 kg of staple grain at Rs.3 a kg will help. This has to be combined with efforts to create avenues for market-driven non-farm enterprises. When China started its agricultural reform, a two-pronged strategy was adopted. It involved higher productivity and profitability of small farms and greater opportunities for non-farm employment and income through Township Village Enterprises. In India there is still a gross mismatch between production and post-harvest technologies. This results in the spoilage of foodgrains and missed opportunities for value addition and agro-processing. The use of agricultural biomass is generally wasteful and does not lead to the creation of jobs or income.

In the field of absorption of food in the body, it is important to ensure clean drinking water, sanitation and primary health care. Even in a State like Tamil Nadu where steps have been taken to ensure food availability at affordable cost, a food insecurity analysis done by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) along with the World Food Programme shows that the level of food security is far better in households with toilets. The Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission, the Total Sanitation programme and the National Rural Health Mission are all important for food security.

India's global rank in the areas of poverty and malnutrition will continue to remain unenviable, so long as the country does not enable all its citizens to have a productive and healthy life. The Food Security Act holds out the last chance to save nearly 40 per cent of India's population from the hunger trap.

(Professor M.S. Swaminathan is a Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, and Chairman of the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation.)

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Chhattisgarh's food revolution

Chhattisgarh's food revolution

Since she could remember, labourer Rama Nag (34) didn't know what her ration card meant, that as one of India's nearly 400 million officially poor people, she was entitled to subsidised foodgrain.

Until 2006, here in the heart of impoverished tribal India, on the edge of the sprawling forests of Bastar and the Maoist zone of Dantewada, Nag and her family of four survived on rice and whatever they could buy in the local market - while the owner of her local fair-price shop kept her card, grabbed her quota of grain and sold it for a profit of about 200 per cent.

What a difference a computer system, committed bureaucrats and - above all - a determined chief minister can make.

Today, Nag holds up her ration card. She knows she lives below the poverty line (BPL) - an income of Rs 12 or below per day in rural areas - and she knows she has a right to subsidised rice, wheat, kerosene and free salt.

"Nobody ever thought the poor will get their full ration on time without any hassles," said Nag, echoing a widespread feeling among Chhattisgarh's 15 million officially poor people.

"It's a relief, especially with rising food prices."

It's hard to keep food hidden from the poor in Chhattisgarh any longer.

"Earlier the sarpanches (village heads) wouldn't inform the people (of their BPL rights or even that they were on the BPL list," said Jagdalpur's Food Controller Vishwanath Netan.

"Now, a copy of the BPL beneficiaries is with every panchayat (village council) and their details are all easily available."

In a country with 23 million "ghost ration cards" in fictitious names and about 121 million deserving poor deprived of subsidised food (according to a 2010 report from a Supreme Court committee headed by former Justice D P Wadhwa), India's sixth poorest state in terms of per capita income, and one of its most insurgency ridden, has engineered a remarkable turnaround in all its 10,500 fair-price shops.

Idea to implementation
Chhattisgarh's great reform began with a chief ministerial idea, followed in 2004 with an administrative revamp and a two-year-long computerisation of Chhattisgarh's public distribution system (PDS).

The PDS is India's oldest, most-established welfare system, first launched by the colonial government in 1942 before going nationwide in 1956.

The political dividends were apparent when in 2008 Chhattisgarh's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Minister Raman Singh was re-elected.

Chhattisgarh's government first created a network of computers across the state's 146 development blocks in 18 districts, where details of every beneficiary, such as Nag, are put online.

Each beneficiary can also keep track of food stocks with an sms, which is sent immediately after a PDS shipment is sent from a distribution centre to a local fair price shop.

"The sms informs the beneficiary of everything, including the date, time, the vehicle number and the stock number," said Som Shekhar, principal system analyst at Raipur's National Informatics Centre.

As shipments were tracked online, fair-price shop owners received incentives to stop pilfering food. The commission for each shop was increased nearly 400 per cent, from Rs 8 to Rs 30 per quintal, and all shipments were tracked online.

On the outskirts of Dantewada, Jitru (42), a farmer who uses only one name, explains how he no longer has to walk 8 km to the nearest fair-price shop since every gram panchayat now has one.

PDS reform is giving tribals new hope, Hindustan Times found while travelling across the state.

In the heart of Dantwada's forests, Paru Karma stands outside his thatched hut and explains how he no longer barters valuable forest produce like honey for salt.

"I get two kg of salt free every month, along with 35 kg of grain, 1.5 kg of sugar and 3 litres of kerosene," said Karma, who until 2006 received only 20 kg of grain for the same price, Rs 70.

These micro improvements lead to macro savings. With computerisation, regular reviews and frequent verification, more than 1.3 lakh BPL cards were cancelled in 2008-08.

"Each fake card guzzles Rs 8,500 of the annual subsidy," said Rajeev Jaiswal, an architect of PDS reform and joint director of Chhattisgarh's food and civil supplies department.

"This was costing us more than Rs 100 crore."

Great leak of India
With 77 per cent of the Rs 55,578-crore national food subsidy bill for 2009-10 - India's biggest welfare spend - likely to be squandered in corruption and leaks, Chhattisgarh's reforms gain increased significance.

They serve as a precursor to national PDS reform, which will unfold as a corollary to Aadhar, the national project to provide every Indian with a digital identity.

While technology is a powerful tool, it is still that, a tool. The PDS system is firing popular imagination because it is backed by administrative will.

In Bastar, anganwadi (health) worker Jogeshwari, a Gond tribal, recounts how she called the PDS network's toll-free number when she did not receive her monthly quota of foodgrain.

What followed astonished Jogeshwari.

Two days later, a food officer walked into her village to fix the problem. "I was so surprised," said Jogeshwari.

Over two years, the toll-free number has registered 4,000 complaints and check a series of malpractices. Based on these complaints, the police registered 500 first-information reports; more than100 officials and shop-owners have been arrested. If citizens wish to follow their case, all information on action taken is available online.

Chhattisgarh keeps trying to improve its PDS: Last week, the government ordered fair-price shops to remain open for eight hours on working days, up from two to four hours.

The results of Chhattisgarh's reforms are revealing.

In 2008-09, the advocacy group, Right-to-Food campaign, found that 13 million BPL families were getting their full quota of foodgrain.

No more than a million fakes were unearthed, as opposed to more than 8 million previously, said Samir Garg, an advisor to the Commissioners of the Supreme Court in a right-to-food case.

In two years, the percentage of the satisfied BPL cardholders has gone from 4 million to 9 million people, according to the same survey.

Even the Maoists do not interfere with the PDS, insist state officials.

"I have not come across any incident of PDS stock being looted by the Maoists during the last couple of years," said Bastar Commissioner Manoj Pingua.

"The system is working well, even in remote areas such as Bastar."

With food subsidies expected to grow as the number of people officially recognised as poor slated to more than double, it's time India started listening to Chhattisgarh.

(Re-Imagining India is a joint initiative of Hindustan Times and Mint to track and understand policy reforms that could, if successful, transform India's efforts at inclusive growth. To see previous articles in the series go to www.hindustantimes.com/reimaginingindia)

India’s underbelly exposed

India’s underbelly exposed

Despite economic growth accelerating, children in India are still struggling to get adequate nutrition

Radhieka Pandeya

Dahod, Gujarat; Mokhada, Maharashtra: In the last 15-16 years, Jhaluriben Baria has had eight children, two of whom died within five days of their birth. Her youngest child Heera Gopabhai Baria, a boy, is seven months old.

The infant is ensconced in a plastic sack strung across two sticks at the entrance of their house in Panchyasan village in Devgadh Baria block of Dahod district, Gujarat. Playing alongside is his sister, Premilaben Baria. At four years of age, Premila’s height is that of a two-year-old, her legs are short and slightly bent, her stomach protrudes and she struggles to walk.

Two years ago, Premila, severely undernourished, was finally admitted to the nearby Godhra government hospital, as she was too weak to even sit up. Her father Gopabhai Baria had refused to admit her to a hospital and relented only after Pradeepa, representing Anandi, a non-profit, pressurized him. “I had to agree to his condition that if anything happened to Premila, it would be my responsibility,” recalls Pradeepa, who uses only one name.

Though Premila is much better now, her parents are following the same routine with Heera, who is visibly undernourished, still fed only his mother’s milk.

Heera’s case is compelling as it is not in isolation. Nearly two million children in India don’t celebrate their sixth birthday. Among those who do, 61 million are severely undernourished and, hence, too small for their age; of them around 20 million die.

The Mokhada block in Thane district in Maharashtra is on the frontiers of the Deccan plateau. Here, water is scarce, the land is dry and the wells are almost empty. At a distance of almost every one kilometre, there is a cluster of three-four houses. Among the Adivasis or tribals that reside in this block, undernutrition among children is a common occurrence: So much so that these people have come to believe that this is how it should be.

In Pendkechiwadi village of Mokhada, Lalita Hanumant Baraf poses happily with her three children—two boys and a girl. Her younger boy is eating dry rice flakes from a steel bowl and though both boys are thin with protruding bellies, Lalita insists they are healthy and not undernourished. Her four-year-old boy weighs 12kg while the two-year-old weighs 7kg. As per the World Health Organization’s child growth standards, the two boys’ healthy weight should be 16kg and 12kg, respectively.

“Sometimes you might think that some symptoms are part of normal life. When the child is too weak, when the child is too sick, when the child is not gaining weight; mothers, fathers and the community need to know that that is not normal,” said Victor Aguayo, chief, child nutrition and development at the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), India.

“But when in your community 50%, 60%, 70% of the children are underweight, stunted, wasted and anaemic, you might consider that normal because actually that is a norm,” he added.

For a country that is home to around one-fifth of the world’s children under five years of age, India accounts for 42% of the world’s burden of undernourished children according to Unicef, and has the highest levels of undernourishment in children below five years of age. The third National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) 2005-06 shows that of the 20% under-fives in the country, 43% are underweight, 48% are stunted (chronically malnourished) and 20% are wasted (acutely undernourished).

More recent data shows that the situation has deteriorated. According to the 2009-2010 data of the women and child development ministry’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), as on 31 December, only 54.16% children in the country are normal, the rest being either moderately or severely malnourished. Under nutrition in India is almost twice as high as that in sub-Saharan Africa.

The highest levels of undernutrition, according to NFHS-3 are found in Madhya Pradesh (60%), Bihar and Jharkhand (50%), Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Meghalaya (40%). Interestingly, Gujarat, one of the richest states in the country, had an undernutrition rate of 40%—suggesting that economic growth is no defence against undernutrition.

The death count due to undernutrition could be worse, since many deaths are attributed to symptomatic causes of undernourishment. “Under nutrition is an important factor contributing to the death of young children. If a child is malnourished, the mortality risk associated with respiratory infections, diarrhoea, malaria, measles, and other infectious diseases is increased,” states the NFHS-3.

More worrying, the levels of undernutrition have remained unchanged despite the acceleration of the Indian economy to over $1 trillion in size. Between the NFHS-2 (1998-99) and NFHS-3, surveys that were conducted with a gap of seven years, the undernutrition rate among children aged between 0 and 35 months was 43% and 40%. Over the same period India’s gross domestic product growth jumped from 6.7% to 9.5%.

Pushing growth alone won’t tackle this malaise, says Aguayo. “It is about how the economic gains trickle down and translate into policies that will address the major drivers of nutrition. Also, how women benefit from economic growth—are they empowered and are they able to make household and budget decisions?”

Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL

Food security — of APL, BPL & IPL

P. SAINATH

There was irony in the timing of the petrol price decontrol order. The decision, which also covered major hikes in diesel and kerosene prices, and affects hundreds of millions of people, came even as Manmohan Singh advised world leaders in Toronto on the need for “inclusive growth.” And while we are still debating “food security” and how best that should be achieved in law. It came while food price inflation edges towards 17 per cent and general inflation is in double digits. Who are we trying to “include” in that growth?

No less tragic was the media's reaction to the price decontrol. Even as Cabinet Ministers sought to distance themselves from it, the editorials mostly reeked of triumphalism: “Free at Last,” screamed one. “A bold, welcome move,” shrilled another headline. With rare exceptions, the edits — in contrast to the response of millions to Monday's bandh — showed yet again how far the mass media are from mass reality.

Most of the time, as the late Murray Kempton used to say, the job editorial writers do, is to “come down from the hills after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.” The media have done that definition proud. There's even been an editorial on Bhopal in the same month that didn't wait for that battle to be over. It finds the villains of Bhopal to be the “activist industry that continues to milk the tragedy.” And mourns the real tragedy: that “any corporation, across the world, would be forced to think twice before proudly announcing to its shareholders that it has set up an ancillary unit in Bhopal.” It does not once mention the words “Union Carbide.” Roll over Kempton. The shooting's on.

The early protests against the price rise got short shrift in the media. In the largest English daily, it earned a couple of stories spanning a modest few inches across three or four columns. The same daily twice devoted a full page — without an ad — on successive days to the death by suicide of a fashion model in Mumbai. Also, passing off without much comment this week — the elevation of our Food and Agriculture Minister to the post of president of the International Cricket Council. At a time when the entire nation is focussed on the issue of food prices and food security.

Mr. Pawar is quoted as saying (AFP, New Delhi, July 2) that he would request the Prime Minister to lessen his ministerial workload. “I may suggest having more hands to help me. I had asked for three Ministers but they have given me only one,” he told journalists. “... If I request to reduce some of my work, we may find some solution.” However, he does promise us that “I won't allow my work in the government to suffer.” That's reassuring. Maybe it's time for the Prime Minister to extend inclusive growth to bring the Food and Agriculture Minister into food and agriculture. (Or we could include cricket in that sector.) Four Ministers in the same field would be truly inclusive.

Yet the fuel price decontrol will profoundly affect the prices of just about everything. At a time of already spiralling food costs. Punctuated by periodic claims that “it should come down within a couple of months,” from Ministers and UPA hacks.

Now comes the news that the food security bill may be set for a radical overhaul. I guess that is welcome — it can't be worse than the early attempts at drafting one. Take for instance the meeting of the Empowered Group of Ministers held in February. They were to “discuss the enactment of the proposed National Food Security Bill.” The first thing the EGoM came up with was this gem. 2.1 (a) “The definition of Food Security should be limited to the specific issue of foodgrains (wheat and rice) and be delinked from the larger issue of nutritional security.”

Food security delinked from nutritional security? Note that the same line concedes nutritional security is “the larger issue.” Why then the need to delink the two?

Is 35 kg of rice at Rs. 3 a kilo (for a section of the population) food security? Are there no other determinants of food security? Like health, nutrition, livelihoods, jobs, food prices? Can we even delink the fuel price hike from discussions on food security? Or from the wilful gutting of the public distribution system? Or from the havoc wrought by the ever-growing futures trade in wheat, pulses, edible oils and more?

The truth is the government seeks ways to spend less and less on the very food security it talks about. Hunger is defined not by how many people suffer it, but by how many the government is willing to pay for. Hence the endless search for a lower BPL figure. To the government's great dismay, all three officially-constituted committees have turned up estimates of poverty higher than its own. Even the Tendulkar committee, closest to the ruling elite's worldview, raises the estimate of rural poverty to 42 per cent. (On a weak and fragile basis, it is true. But still higher than the government's count.)

The BPL Expert group headed by N.C. Saxena raises that to around 50 per cent. While the report of the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector states on its first page that 836 million Indians (77 per cent of our people) live on Rs. 20 a day or less. Accepting that, for instance, would mean a few thousand crores more in spending on the hungry. The official line is simple. Since we cannot afford to feed all the hungry, there must only be as many hungry as we can afford to feed.

Most dishonest of all is the “there-is-no-money” line. The country spends Rs. 10,000 crore on a new airport. There's Rs. 40,000 crore or more for the Commonwealth Games. There's Rs. 60,000 crore happily lost in the spectrum scam. There's Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs under just three heads for the super-rich and the corporate sector in the current Union budget. But funds for the hungry are hard to come by. What would it cost to universalise the PDS? Pravin Jha and Nilachal Acharya estimate that if rice/wheat were made available to all Indians at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would add Rs.84,399 crore to the food subsidy in coming budgets. That's about one-sixth of the tax write-offs for the wealthy in this year's budget. (Other estimates place the added expenditure each year at no more than Rs. 45,000 crore).

What will be the costs of not finding the money — in a country which ranks at 66 among 88 in the Global Hunger Index? In a nation whose child malnourishment record is worse than that of sub-Saharan Africa? A country now ranking 134 in the United Nations Human Development Index below Bhutan and Laos?

The same country that has 49 dollar billionaires in the Forbes list. (Many of whom receive government freebies in diverse forms. Some for their IPL involvements). If a government will not even try to ensure that no citizen goes hungry, should it remain in power? Or should it, at the very least, state honestly that the food security of every Indian is neither its aim nor its intent? Why tag ‘food security' to a bill that will legitimise the opposite? How can we call something a ‘right' if everyone does not have it?

A disclosure: I was a member of the BPL Expert Group. In a note annexed to that report, I argued that in four sectors — food, healthcare, education and decent work — access had to be universal. That flows from the Directive Principles of State Policy of the Constitution. The rights of our people are based on their being citizens. Not on their ability to pay. Not on their being BPL or APL (or even IPL). Rights, by definition, are universal and indivisible.

Will the features of the government's proposed food security bill take the Directive Principles forward? Or will it weaken them? Diluting constitutional rights and presenting the watered down mix as progressive legislation is fraud. The only PDS that will work is a universal one. It is only in those States that have the closest thing to a universal system — Kerala and Tamil Nadu — where the PDS has functioned best.

Now there's talk of an “experiment” making access to food (that is, mainly wheat and rice) “universal” in about 150 districts. While this might be a step forward in thinking, it could prove a misstep in practice. This is “targeting” in other clothes. It could collapse as foodgrain from districts that are “universal” migrate to districts that are not. Better to go that final mile. Universalise.

Give cash to the poor to solve world poverty

Give cash to the poor to solve world poverty

Aditya Chakrabortty

There's a revolution in aid afoot: it's all about giving money straight to the poor, and it started with Bruce Lee.

The most exciting new idea for tackling poverty and feeding billions around the world has got nothing to do with hydroelectric dams or back-slapping summitry. Instead, this one begins with a story about kung-fu movies.

In the mid-90s, Claire Melamed was working in a village in the far north of Mozambique. Nacuca had no electricity, nor running water, and precious few distractions. As the development economist recalls: “Villagers would ask, ‘We have to live here, but how come you've chosen to stay?'” Then one day visitors came, bearing entertainment.

They were former soldiers from Mozambique's long civil war and, like the other 90,000 or so demobbed men, they were getting $15 a month from donors, along with some funding to start businesses. This lot had pooled the hand—outs to buy a TV, a video recorder and a generator.

Oh, and a few old Bruce Lee tapes.

The former soldiers toured villages across Mozambique showing copies of Enter the Dragon and Fist of Fury for cash or, failing that, maize and cassava. And they went down a storm in the remote rural yawn of Nacuca, staying for days and playing the same films over and over.

New idea in aid

What Melamed saw in Mozambique was one of the first major exercises in what is now among the most talked—about new ideas in aid, called cash transfers — or, as a new book title puts it, “Just give money to the poor”, as those donors did to the former soldiers. The authors, Joseph Hanlon, Armando Barrientos and David Hulme, count 45 countries that hand cash to more than 110 million families. In Brazil, poor families can collect money from lottery shops. Pickup trucks drive across Namibia, bearing safes with cash machines welded on the front, used by old ladies to take out their monthly pensions.

It sounds forehead-smackingly obvious: isn't giving cash to the poor what we do every time we shovel change into an envelope, or pledge a donation to a fundraising telethon? But when that money — whether from individuals or governments or big international institutions like the World Bank — gets to Africa or Asia, it's typically turned into new roads, schools, even community radio stations. The idea is to give poor people the infrastructure and training they need to lift themselves out of destitution.

Or perhaps I should say that was the idea. Looking back over the last few years, we see in retrospect a brief golden period for aid. It was marked in Britain by turning Clare Short into the new secretary of state for international development, and defined internationally by the 2005 pledge at Gleneagles of the G8 richest countries to give more money to Africa. And it appears to be drawing to a close. Academics and writers such as Bill Easterly and Dambisa Moyo now gain plaudits for books with titles such as Dead Aid. Recession—hit politicians at events such as last weekend's G20 summit in Toronto avoid even mentioning the Gleneagles promises. And when official money is handed over, it often ends up on the most useless projects. In 2008, Berlin spent half a million dollars on what it called a “basic nutrition project” but which turned out to be a scheme to reduce unpleasant smells from food—processing factories in China and (naturally enough) Germany. That would be called a joke, if it was only remotely funny.

Against all that, the idea of just handing over a hefty chunk of the world's $100bn aid money directly to the 1.4 billion people living on less than $1.25 a day is pretty attractive. Less funny business from donors, and far less waste. And what makes this most remarkable of all is that while the rich countries squabble over how much money to give and in what form, this initiative has sprung largely from the poor nations — usually under pressure from some of their poorest people.

This is the world of aid turned upside down. A couple of years ago, Oxfam tried the idea out in a few villages in Vietnam. Charity workers gave the equivalent of three years' wages in one go to more than 400 families. When they returned they found that poverty had dropped through the floor, with most of the money spent sensibly on food or fertilisers, seeds and cows. But older people had put some cash towards coffins, explaining that funerals were a major expense. And one group had built a communal house, to practise yoga.

It takes a village to raise a child, Hillary Clinton once wrote; on this showing, it takes just a few million Vietnamese dong to raise a village into a bijou Notting Hill.

Findings such as these have led the author Joe Hanlon to call for most of the Gleneagles millions to be shovelled into poor people's pockets. That's going too far: individual donations cannot replace schools or hospitals. It may be that giving cash works best when there are amenities and opportunities — and people who can use both.

As Richard Dowden at the Royal African Society points out: “Village communities are often tightly controlled by elders, chiefs and kings. Just handing over dollars to a rural community — even to the supposedly poorest people — risks reinforcing that hierarchy.” But, qualifications aside, the concept is only going to get more popular. Indeed, New York recently tried the idea with its poor citizens, handing over money if they successfully sent their kids to school.

Cash transfers may first have been made in a poor country, but the idea travels well. A bit like those Bruce Lee films. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

The high cost of some cheap weddings

The high cost of some cheap weddings

P. Sainath

In village after village of crisis-hit Vidarbha region you can find many girls aged 25 or more unmarried because their parents can't afford it. This is a major source of tension in the community.

The irony was hard to miss. Political leaders — MPs and MLAs amongst them — lecturing people on the virtues of low-cost marriages. Divthana didn't need the sermon. This village in Buldhana district began its cheap, mass weddings way back in 1983. It has seen hundreds of brides married at very low cost to their families since then. That is, 23 years before the Maharashtra government launched its own mass-wedding programme as part of the Chief Minister's relief package for the Vidarbha region.

“The netas spend crores on the weddings of their own daughters but celebrate our austerity,” scoffs one young villager. Divthana took no funds from government for its mass weddings. It has also convinced its people to have all the marriages in a given year jointly and on the same day. In a region where even the very poor might be forced to spend upwards of a lakh on getting a daughter married, this means a great deal. The cheap wedding practice has come from the dominant Rajput community that makes up most of the village. Which seems to give it a stamp of legitimacy, making it easier for more deprived groups around here to accept simple weddings.

“The normal wedding involves too many costs, too many feasts, too many guests,” says Vishnu Ingle of Divthana. A stringer for major Marathi dailies like Lokmat and Sakal, Mr. Ingle's reports on the subject have helped make this village famous in the region “Today 15 of our girls will get married and none of their families will pay more than Rs.7,000 for it,” he says, proudly. He hands us the cheaply-printed joint invitation Divthana has put out for the event.

Weddings have been an explosive issue in the region for some years now. Rising costs and dowry pressures have added to the ruin of many in six Vidarbha districts already battered by a decade-long agrarian crisis. Failure to get their daughters married has been cited as a factor in the suicides of some farmers and it is a major source of debt and stress for most. As early as 2006, this journal had reported the Maharashtra government's finding on the subject. “Well over three lakh families had daughters whose marriages they could not arrange due to the financial crisis they faced. One in every nine showed interest in the mass marriage scheme of the Government.” ( The Hindu, November 22, 2006). That crisis has worsened a lot since then. In villages across the region, you can find many girls 25 years or older, unmarried because their parents can't afford it.

So Divthana becomes important. “We prefer it this way,” says Kalpana, one of the village's young brides in the most recent mass wedding. Her father, Rathor Singh Ingle agrees. “This is sensible and not wasteful.” Other brides, their parents and even the bridegrooms we spoke to were for it. But what if better-off elements want to have their own, more upscale weddings? “I was one of those,” says Prabhakar Ingle who holds a steady job at a private hospital. “But friends in the village talked me out of the idea. I'm quite happy I did it this way.” People around him are quick to point out that bridegrooms from other villages are also accepting it. “Or how would we get our daughters married?” they ask.

An apolitical event

The organiser of the wedding we are attending is the Hanuman Sansthan. This organisation has at least ten committees with over a hundred members to run the annual wedding day of the village. These include a ‘dal committee' and a ‘water committee'. The event after all, is a public one and draws many guests. “What the girls' families contribute works out to no more than Rs.7,000,” say Sansthan officials. “The rest is voluntary labour and help from villagers.” The village has different political trends within, say Sansthan president Mansinh More and Divthana sarpanch Bhagwanji More. “But the Sansthan and the whole village act as one on social issues like the mass weddings. We see these as above politics.” At least a dozen neighbouring villages now follow Divthana's example.

And to this point, it's quite admirable. Success has many fathers, though. They're showing up in the form of more and more political bigwigs attending the mass weddings to harangue the gathering on simplicity. Local leaders can't afford not to be seen at them. As one activist put it: “Political leaders engaging with the process is not a bad thing. This way the example reaches more people and gains legitimacy.” The problem is when the process itself gets politicised — and hijacked. A fate that threatens Divthana's great effort.

The math, for instance, no longer adds up. It is quite true that the families of the brides pay only a fraction of what they would if they held separate weddings. They avoid debt and possible bankruptcy as a result. However, as the annual wedding day event gains greater success, it is costing a lot more than it should. Some 15,000 people are at this wedding — many here because the political leaders are — and all of them were to be fed as guests. Divthana is spending a lot of money on its cheap weddings. To the point where it threatens to gut a fine example of simple living and joint effort. The poor families did not pay for the huge public event, but somebody did. Maybe rich political leaders. The idea of a village community taking charge of itself suffers. It also opens up a new chain of patronage. And converts somebody's wedding into a political event.

The importance of Divthana's example can be seen in the suffering of many in other villages in this wedding season. Like struggling farmer Shekar Badre in Amravati who took his own life soon after learning his family had to raise Rs.1 lakh for his sister's wedding. Or of Bhagwan Hanate in Akola, who spent a fortune marrying off his first three daughters. “The wedding of my fourth daughter — I have five — broke down just days before the event. I simply could raise no more money to meet the demands of the other side.” Sometimes, unmarried daughters of farmers who have committed suicide have taken their own lives — blaming themselves for their fathers' deaths.

In a region ravaged by an ongoing agrarian crisis, costly weddings are sometimes the last straw. Divthana shows a way out of this. That is, if it does not become a victim of its own success.