National Food Security Bill 2013 Essay

Only three pct of Indians pay income tax our tax-GDP ratio is among the lowest in the world. This essential change. Our elites must realise that Indias poverty has damaging consequences for them, and that they arsehole help reducing it. The food security bill, with all its limitations, volition hopefully contribute to generating oft(prenominal) awareness, says Praful Bidwai.After vacillating for years over taking any pro-people measures, the unite Progressive Alliance finally did something bold and worthy by having the study Food Security Bill passed in Parliament a forebode made in the UPAs first 100 days docket after its return to power in 2009.The Bill won a resounding victory in the Lok Sabha, with a margin exceeding 100, because non-UPA parties including the Janata Dal-United, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and level off the Shiv Sena felt they had no choice but to support it. It sailed through the Rajya Sabha too.The academic degree was set by a rare, spirited speec h by relation back president Sonia Gandhi, in which she described the legislation as Indias jeopardy to make history by abolishing hunger and malnutrition, and emphasised that India can non afford not to get the law The question is not whether we can raise the resources or not. We deport to do it.The NFSB has invested meaning, public purpose and a degree of legitimacy into the UPAs otherwise corruption-ridden, shoddy and often appalling performance in governing down the stairs an increasingly right-leaning leadership. This at once put the Bharatiya Janata Party on the defensive. Its leaders were reduced to opposing a measure that represents genuine companionable progress, and making thoughtless statements about the Bill being about balloting security, not food security.The BJP now has nothing to offer to the state of matter but obscurantist programmes like building a temple at Ayodhya, and parochial, and raiding pro-corporate agendas under Narendra Modis rabidly communal l eadership.The Bill is open to the criticism that it doesnt go far enough. Instead ofuniversalising subsidised food provision, it confines it to two-thirds of the population, and truncates it set ahead by limiting the food quota to five kilos of grain per capita per month quite of the 35 kg per family demanded by right-to-food campaigners. The per capita quota puts small households, such as those headed by widows and single women, at a disadvantage.A universalised Public Distribution System, screen the entire population, has been proved to be more effective and less devoted to leakage than one targeted at below-poverty-line groups in Kerala, Tamil Nadu and even poor, backswept Chhattisgarh. The relatively well-off wont stand in queues at ration shops they select themselves out of a universal PDS.Besides, a stupendous proportion even of those officially defined as poor siret possess BPL ration cards. The ratio can be as high as 40 pct in some highly deprived states. The latest National Sample Survey reveals that 51 percent of rural people possessing less than one-hundredth of a hectare of land have no ration cards of any kind less than 23 percent have BPL cards.The problem of identifying the poor remains unresolved. Nevertheless, the broader coverage proposed under the NFSB and the simple, attractive formula of rice at Rs 3 per kg, wheat at Rs 2, and coarse grains at Re 1 marks a expressed improvement over the current situation. It creates a right or entitlement for the poor, which can go some way in reducing acute hunger.However, right-wing commentators, including neo-liberal economists, credit-rating agencies, multinational and Indian big business, and writers/anchors in the media, have vitriolically attacked the NFSB as an instance of reckless populism.Some claim it will do to infinitesimal to relieve malnutrition among Indian children, almost one-half of whom suffer from it. Yet others allot that the poor dont want or deserve subsidies they tr ain to work, earn more and eat better.And almost all of them say the NFSB will entail excessive wastefulexpenditure of Rs 1.25 lakh crores. This will exasperate Indias growing fiscal crisis and further depress already hesitate GDP increase, now down to four-five percent. Eventually, this will work against the poor. Besides, if investment and growth are to be revived, India cant spend so much on food security.