Food Guarantee in India

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is reportedly considering enacting a legislation that guarantees to provide food for all. Recently, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee asked Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar at the meeting of the empowered group of ministers to draft such a bill on national food security.
It is, however, not certain whether the proposed bill would be ready by the time the Parliamentary budget session commences, and what would be the provisions of the bill, who would be brought under its sphere, and whether it would be confined to people Below Poverty Line (BPL) or others would also be included?

Government's Initiatives
Whatever be it, the proposal can safely be termed a historic initiative of the UPA Government. A system that guarantees food can safely be termed an oasis in the vast expanse of a dessert at a time when the common man is groaning under the heavy yoke of sky-rocketing prices of essential commodities with food articles like wheat, pulses, and rice getting out of reach of the common man. Food security implies no one would die of hunger and starvation. It is, indeed, no easy task to give guarantee of providing food through enactment of legislation. Had it been an easy task, the UPA Government would have enacted and implemented the law even during last year, when President Pratibha Patil had referred to food security in her address to Parliament.
In fact, this is a very difficult, complex issue that also requires huge amount of money. If the report submitted by the Suresh Tendulkar Committee were accepted to be true, 38 percent of the country's populace falls in the category of living BPL. If the government drafts its budget in line with the report, it would need an estimated expenditure of Rs.450 billion. Further, the estimates of states are different than those of the committee. Various state governments maintain that the number of those living BPL is four to five times higher than the centrally projected figures. In such a scenario, the estimated expenditure may cross Rs.650 billion. Further, fixing the quantity of food grain and their price, and ensuring that no eligible person gets left out of its purview would be no less a horrendous task.

Legislation on Food Security
There are a large number of people in the country who continue to be deprived of ration cards even to this day. To get ration card issued, one needs a proper address where one lives, but there are thousands of homeless people. This raises the question of taking the scheme to cover homeless people. It is a complex issue indeed, without addressing which even the proposed legislation on food security may fail in its objective. There is, therefore, the need that the central and state governments together find a solution to the issue.
It has been noticed that state governments, at times, inflate the figures of those living BPL with a view to getting higher federal aid, and these governments do not usually substantiate their claim with concrete proof. Consequently, even during this era of science and technology, figures of BPL families continue to be disputed, and the targeted population for welfare of which the scheme was formulated suffers. Similarly, state governments would desire that while implementing the Food Security Act, it should remain outside the purview of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) schemes, and no scheme under NREGA be amalgamated with the proposed Food Security Act.

Price Hike of Essential Commodities
The UPA Government's decision to enact legislation on food security needs to be welcomed. It would be the second major and historic achievement of the UPA Government, after the Right To Education Act. It can be taken as a glimmer of hope for these poverty ridden people who find it difficult to get a square meal a day at a time when spiraling price hike of essential commodities has broken the back of the common man.
It is, perhaps, because of this that various political parties have impressed the need to enact such legislation as soon as possible. Yet, it would have gone a long way to provide succor to people had the bill been drafted before the Parliamentary budget session, due soon.