Hungry arms twisting, not hungry
Proposal for National Food Safety Law in India
It is acceptable that the state should legitimize people’s right to food, while food security for the elderly, destitute, single women and widows, people with diseases and stigmatized occupations, the homeless, primitive tribal groups and excluded communities should be seized, in contrast to the constitutional duty of the State defined in the fundamental rights and guiding principles of state policy. Can you believe that a popularly elected regime can prepare and submit draft food rights legislation that would keep a large portion of its own citizens starved and exploited? If so, then more than 400 million people (the difference between the planning commission estimates of poor people and the number of nutritionally insecure people according to Professor Utsa Patnaik and Arjun Sengupta) will continue to live and starve. A tour of the concept that the Group of Empowered Ministers (EGoM) is following makes it clear that if the proposals for the National Food Security Law are approved, with their current understanding, in the coming days chronic hunger, malnutrition and inequality would reach their peak. altitude. The national alliance government at the center calling itself progressive has taken steps to implement a National Food Security Act under which all families below the poverty level would receive 25kg of grain at Rs 3 per kg. In a context of rising prices, drought, deep famine (most of which are the result of previous governments’ economic policies), such limited laws are totally irrelevant and useless. These proposed rights are controversial and would further promote exclusion.
The action related to the new law comes at a time when India is considered one of the world’s fastest growing economies (actually developing unevenly and with the least jobs), but it is also the country where the most of malnourished children. There are around 360 billionaires in the country, but 93 percent of the workforce is in an unorganized sector that has no legal security provisions and protection measures from the state. Despite the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in place, workers receive only Rs 30-40 wages for a day’s work which also several days after the job ends. The price of food grains is skyrocketing and nutritious food is out of reach for most people and yet the finance minister, agriculture minister and also the prime minister are proud to announce from public platforms and private companies that control over price increases is out of their hands. They do not remember that it is not a situation to be proud of but rather to be ashamed of. The available reserve stock of food grains was filled with twice the required food grains, but corporate players in the food grains sector were allowed to profit financially from the hunger of ordinary people. The majority of the country’s population, around 64 percent, earn their living from agriculture, and yet agriculture faces one of the worst-case scenarios. Unfortunately, those who produce food and work hard to make us food secure are forced to sleep hungry. Food grain availability per capita is declining and farmers are being forced to commit suicide or abandon farming. Continued droughts have worsened the situation. Promises that were repeatedly made during elections are being violated by the political parties in power.
Currently, hunger and malnutrition are channeling the violation of the fundamental right to life and survival repeatedly, but the State is not prepared to consider food and nutritional security as essential rights of people. Therefore, it has decided that under the proposed National Food Security Law, only a third of the people in need would receive a share of the food needs. They have restricted the rights to 25 kg of ration. The fact that a family of five members needs a minimum of 60 kg of cereals and pulses per month has been totally ignored. Along with rising prices and dangers to livelihoods, the way people get caught up in the web of malnutrition; there is a need to at least double the proposed grain eligibility.
The factor below the poverty line has become the basis of the new law. We all know that the definition of poverty only with indicators based on spending and the faulty identification of BPL has become the biggest State sponsored scam and hoax of the current times. To absolve itself of the charges, the government has played games with the statistics to show poverty at lower levels, but over the past ten years it has repeatedly become clear that capitalist economists and politicians are involved in statistical tricks with poverty figures. . Arjun Sengupta, in his report on workers in the unorganized sector, has shown that 77 per cent of people try to survive by spending Rs 20 a day. Would these people be considered outside the scope of poverty? So Prof. Utsa Patnaik says that the basic need for the rural population is about 2400 calories per day and for the urban population it is about 2100 calories per day, but 76 percent of people do not get these essential calories, which which means having a stomach full of nutritious food. Wouldn’t these 840 million people consider themselves poor? The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-III) shows that between 1998-99 and 2005-06, malnutrition among children has decreased by only one percent, but the Government of India made the mysterious effort to reduce the poverty figures in ten. percent during this period. It considers that only 28.3 per cent of people, i.e. about Rs 31 crore (Rs 6.5 crore) families are below the poverty line. In reality, these are those people who are at or around the starvation line and not below the poverty line.
After intervention by the Supreme Court and much public debate, the Union Ministry of Rural Development handed over the responsibility of analyzing the indicators and the identification process to a committee of experts headed by retd. The IAS official, Dr. NC Saxena, said that under any circumstances, 50 percent of the country’s rural population should be considered poor. He has recommended that instead of relying on indices like the BPL for food and nutrition, everyone should have the right to food security. At the same time, the Planning Commission of India also appointed Prof. Suresh Tendulkar Committee, who deemed 41.8 percent of the rural population poor. These studies have shown that despite living in poverty, the Government of India is making a planned effort to keep hundreds of people out of poverty.
When it is almost certain that in the current scenario when the growing dangers of food insecurity, rising prices, shifting production priorities, increasing market intervention, shrinking food reach, and rampant corruption are rapidly inflating the hunger zone and slowly taking over. people’s lives completely, in such a situation, EGoM’s conversations about food safety sound like less about safety and more about business and politics. At an EGoM meeting, EGoM member and Chief Minister AK Antony quite rightly pointed out that statistics and economics cannot cloud the political mandate, as Congress Speaker Sonia Gandhi envisions behind the proposed bill. .
Still, only the distribution aspect is at the center and no political intervention is being thought of to protect, promote and preserve the food production aspect instead of concentrating on the export and import of food grains and other grains. Farmers must be protected and large corporations must not be given unusual exemptions from taxes and tariffs to import grain and create a food crisis in the country. During the last five years, the first 4 million tons of food grains were exported without meeting internal needs and when famine began to spread through the country, grains were imported from other countries and companies at double the cost. Even today, in the name of government purchasing, 75 percent of grain is procured from only 5 states, forcing out-of-state farmers to develop a nonchalant attitude in agriculture, especially for food and grain and gradually abandon it. Even now, the government shows political will by declaring that grain production will be given priority and will immediately devise a decentralized purchasing mechanism for all states whenever possible to protect the interests of farmers. The union government, of course, continues to say that efforts would be made to bring agriculture to the folds of progress, but no links to their commitment could be seen as EGoM prepared a draft NFSA.
The EGoM-prepared bill has simply ignored the elderly, the infirm, single women and widows, the disabled and other excluded sectors of society by saying that, if it deemed it appropriate, schemes targeting these sectors could be linked to the provision of 25 kg of grains, but institutionalized schemes such as ICDS and MDM would remain on the sidelines. Freedom from Hunger with nutritional security is a fundamental right of children in all circumstances, but in a faster-moving country, where half the children are malnourished, the government is not ashamed to say that nutrition would not be a legal right of children. It seems that this group is not in a position to internalize the needs of these particular groups and only tries to satisfy the statistics and economics of the act.
We have been noticing that since 1991, when liberalization policies were adopted, whenever civil and economic rights and community control over natural resources are discussed, policy makers give a very concise logic of lack of resources. In contrast, the government does not hesitate at all to provide benefits or exemptions to businesses and corporations from taxes. Very clearly public resources have been used to subsidize private benefit. Over the past year, Rs 4,18,096 Crore worth of taxes were exempted for the country’s wealthy while tax theft amounts to Rs One Lakh Crore per year. Comparatively, the government allocates only Rs 39000 Crore for NREGA and Rs 43000 Crore for subsidized food grains. Billions of rupees are lying in Swiss banks, while several billion rupees are being spent on unnecessary exhibition schemes and programs like the Commonwealth Games when the stomachs of the poor are empty.
It is worth mentioning that 46 percent of children in the country are malnourished and this rate is twice that of sub-Saharan Africa. Not only this, it is shameful that the maternal mortality rate is very high in India and one of the main reasons is malnutrition among the women. Apart from the universalization of the public distribution system, nutrition and public health programs, no other step can bring about a change in the situation.
Sachin Kumar Jain