Right to Food Campaign urges the UPA to bring the bill through after debate and discussion in Parliament
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Right to Food Campaign
(Secretariat)
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E 39, First Floor, Lajpat Nagar III, New Delhi 110024, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phone: 011- 29849563, Email: righttofoodindia@gmail.com, Website: www.righttofoodindia.org
Press Release
Right to Food Campaign urges the UPA to bring the bill through after debate and discussion in Parliament
The Right to Food Campaign is appalled by the undemocratic decision of the Congress led UPA's Cabinet's decision to promulgate an ordinance on food security. An issue like food security which affects millions in our country requires deep and informed debate in Parliament. To ensure a collective responsibility in its implementation; this Bill needed to be passed taking along all state Governments and political parties and therefore needed discussion in Parliament Such a discussion was possible with the Monsoon session due in just a few weeks. Why then such a hurry to pass an ordinance? The campaign condemns this highhanded decision making style of the Government in this matter.
Several important parties, including the CPI, CPI (M), BJD, TMC, AIDMK had moved amendments in the Lok Sabha and these need to be heard. Through the media it is clear that the senior leaders of the BJP have also consented to the passage of the bill if brought in for discussion. Most of these parties have placed amendments asking for universal coverage and opposing the reduction of entitlements from 7 kgs to 5 kgs per person per month. The BJP had made it clear that it would accept nothing less than the Food Security Bill which has some more progressive components than the National Food Security Bill. Parties with large farmer constituencies like the Samajwadi Party and Shiromani Akali Dal are perturbed at the lack of attention to farmers' issues. All these voices and concerns need to be heard and debated.
It is reported that the Cabinet has brought an ordinance on the lines of the amendments of the NFSB, 2011 which were presented in Parliament on May, 2nd 2013. This amended version of the NFSB is extremely inadequate and makes a mockery of food security. It provides extremely limited food entitlements, is piece meal and is nowhere close to providing food security. The much touted PDS will be providing only 166 gms per person per day food security, by providing only 25kgs of grains per family. It has continued with the regime of fragmenting the poor, if it was APL-BPL earlier, then it is AAY, General Beneficiary and the excluded, which are as high as 25% rural and 50 % urban. It is cereal based only, leaving the question of nutritional security out of the purview of Government's accountability. It makes no provisions for production of food or for support of small and marginal farmers who are food producers, but very food insecure and poor. It even undermines some of the entitlements ensured by the Supreme Court of India in the Right to Food case. It criminalises mother's who produce more than two children and children of higher order by not provisioning for maternal entitlements for them. It has no provisions for community kitchens and feeding of the most hungry or to deal with starvation deaths, leaving Gandhi's "last man", the starving millions unaddressed in the law. Finally, the so called "right of food security" will be completely compromised with an ineffective weak grievance redressal mechanism.
The Right to Food campaign has consistently campaigned since 2009 June for a comprehensive food security Act. We would urge the Prime Minister and the UPA Government to conduct business in Parliament and see that all Parties participate actively in debating, discussing and passing a comprehensive Food Security Act. For the Ordinance to have any effect, it has to in any case be passed through Parliament within six months. This will be the opportunity to strengthen the Bill along the many amendments proposed by various Parties.
We are also concerned that the process of implementation and identification of beneficiaries will not be done properly if such a hurried approach is taken. Media reports suggest that the Government plans to complete identification within two months. If this is indeed the case, then many deserving people will be excluded and there will be no scope for community participation and monitoring in the process of identification of beneficiaries, which is central to the process being fair and effective.
The Right to Food Campaign has been consistently demanding a comprehensive food security law that incentivises agriculture production, provides for local procurement and local storage along with a decentralised and de-privatised universal PDS; special entitlements for children, mothers, aged, disabled, widows, migrants and destitute including universalised ICDS; monthly pensions, community kitchens and destitute feeding programmes; effective measures for grievance redress, transparency and accountability and safeguards against commercial interference including GMs in any of the food/nutrition related schemes and against the introduction of cash transfers in place of PDS. We demand that these concerns be addressed as amendments through an immediate Parliamentary debate on the Food Security Ordinance (a list of the shortcomings in the current version is annexed below).
The recent disaster in Uttarkhand, the consequent suffering in terms of hunger and ill-health and the Government's mismanagement of the crisis once again points to the importance for have strong provisions in place to ensure immediate action to address food security during times of emergencies disaster. Instead what the Bill has is a provision (force majeure), where the Government is not liable to provide compensation during a flood, drought, fire, earthquake etc , when actually these are the times when people need food aid the most. This clause must be removed.
The National Food Security Bill is a crucial opportunity to end hunger and malnutrition in India and we hope that this will not be missed. The Right to Food Campaign will continue to protest against a process that stops debate and discussion over an issue that effects millions in our country. We stand in opposition to a Bill that is so piecemeal in its approach and we will continue to mobilise for a comprehensive food security bill.
We are,
Kavita Srivastava on behalf of the Steering Committee of the Right to Food Campaign
Annie Raja (National Federation for Indian Women), Anuradha Talwar and Gautam Modi (New Trade Union Initiative), Arun Gupta and Radha Holla (Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India), Arundhati Dhuru and Ulka Mahajan (National Alliance of People's Movements), Asha Mishra and Vinod Raina (Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti), Aruna Roy, Anjali Bharadwaj and Nikhil Dey (National Campaign for People's Right to Information), Ashok Bharti (National Conference of Dalit Organizations), Colin Gonsalves (Human Rights Law Network), G V Ramanjaneyulu (Alliance for Sustainable and Holistic Agriculture), Kavita Srivastava and Binayak Sen (People's Union for Civil Liberties), Lali Dhakar, Sarawasti Singh, Shilpa Dey and Radha Raghwal (National Forum for Single Women's Rights), Mira Shiva (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan), Paul Divakar and Asha Kowtal (National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights), Prahlad Ray and Anand Malakar (Rashtriya Viklang Manch), Subhash Bhatnagar (National Campaign Committee for Unorganized Sector workers)
Veena Shatrugna, M Kodandram and Rama Melkote (Andhra Pradesh), Saito Basumaatary and Sunil Kaul (Assam), Rupesh (Bihar), Gangabhai and Sameer Garg (Chhattisgarh), Pushpa, Dharmender, Ramendra, Yogesh, Vimla and Sarita (Delhi), Sejal Dand and Sumitra Thakkar (Gujarat), Abhay Kumar and Clifton (Karnataka), Balram, Gurjeet Singh and James Herenj (Jharkhand), Sachin Jain (Madhya Pradesh), Mukta Srivastava and Suresh Sawant (Maharashtra), Tarun Bharatiya (Meghalaya), Chingmak Chang (Nagaland) Bidyut Mohanty and Raj Kishore Mishra, Vidhya Das, Manas Ranjan (Orissa), Ashok Khandelwal, Bhanwar Singh and Vijay Lakshmi (Rajasthan), V Suresh (Tamil Nadu), Bindu Singh (Uttar Pradesh), Fr. Jothi SJ and Mr. Saradindu Biswas (West Bengal)
Annexure 1: Shortcomings in the National Food Security Bill/Ordinance:
1. The present version of the Bill (which is now an Ordinance) does not specify any time frame for the rolling out of the entitlements in the law. .
2. It continues with a Targeted PDS, excluding 33 % of the population from accessing the PDS as a right, giving scope to large exclusion errors of the poor in the country as a whole. The improved framework of single pricing in the present bill over the dual pricing under the existing APL-BPL system is undermined by the exclusion of a third of the country.
3. While the ICMR norms recommend that an adult requires 14kgs of food grains per month and children 7kgs; the Bill provides for reduced entitlements to 5kgs per person per month, thus ensuring only 166 gms of cereal per person per day, which is barely enough for two rotis a day.
4. The Bill provides only for cereals with no entitlements to basic food necessities such as pulses and edible oil required to combat malnutrition.
5. The Bill continues to allow for the entry of private contractors and commercial interests in the supply of food in the ICDS, especially by insisting on specific norms related to Food Safety Acts and micronutrient norms (Note in Schedule 2).
6. This bill is still ambiguous regarding universal maternal entitlements by continuing with the conditionality in the scheme of the two child norm, which will penalise children of higher order as well as deny the mother of her basic rights.
7. The Bill does not have a strong grievance redress mechanism. For the Bill to be effective there needs to be in place a strong, decentralized and independent grievance redress mechanism that includes Panchayat or block level grievance redress officers with powers to impose penalties on erring officials.
8. The Bill does not provide any agriculture and production-related entitlements for farmers in spite of the fact that more than 60% of the people in this country are dependent on agriculture for their livelihoods. A revived and vibrant agriculture sector forms the backbone of food security.
9. It allows for the back door entry of cash transfers instead of food grains by allowing for a food security allowance when food is not available, and by allowing cash transfers as a part of PDS reforms.
10. It has no provisions like old age pensions for the support of senior citizens , or for feeding through community kitchens or other measures of the homeless, destitute and other sections that are most often the victims of starvation.
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