M A I N   N E W S

Nod to Food Security Bill draft
Tribune News Service

FIGHTING HUNGER n 68% of the total population will have food security n 7 kg of foodgrains per month per person will be given to those in the BPL category n For others, the food quantity will be 3-4 kg per person

New Delhi, July 11
An Empowered Group of Ministers (EGoM) has cleared the draft Food Security Bill, which will provide highly subsidised wheat and rice to the poor as a matter of legal right but not quite in the shape and size the Congress president Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council had recommended.

The ministers’ panel headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee gave the green signal to the proposal to provide foodgrain at cheap rate to 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of those living in urban area while the NAC, in its draft, had recommended covering 90 per cent of rural population and 50 per cent of urban population under the scheme.

In other words, 68 per cent of the country’s total population will have food security, more or less the same number that is at present being covered under the existing PDS. The only difference is that their entitlement will now be legal. “Ration cards in the country are already catering to a population of 90 crore.

The government has in fact scaled down the number and reduced its liability,” food policy analyst Devinder Sharma says. Meanwhile, the states which have a crucial role in implementation of the programme will also be taken on board. The Bill, after being vetted by the Law Ministry, will be forwarded to the chief ministers and thereafter to Parliament, most likely in the Monsoon Session.

The Bill will give legal right to the beneficiaries for food, a quantity of 7 kg per month per person will be given to the “priority sector” (below poverty line). It will be provided at Rs 3 per kg for rice and Rs 2 per kg for wheat. For the general category (above poverty line) the food quantity will be 3-4 kg per person at half of the minimum support price which the government pays to farmers.

The ministry has worked out the draft Bill keeping in mind the procurement level of 55-60 million tonnes. This way government will require 51 million tonnes of foodgrains with a total food subsidy Bill amounting to around Rs 95,000 crore.

Apprehensions had been raised regarding availability of requisite amount of foodgrain if the NAC’s proposal had been agreed to. That way India would have annually required around 60 to 65 MT food grain, the cost of which would have been Rs 1 lakh crore.