Food entitlement law is too open-ended now: Shanta Kumar

Interview with Chairman, Food Corporation of India Revamp Panel

A high-level committee constituted by the government to reform the five decade-old Food Corporation of India (FCI) has given its report. Panel chairman Shanta Kumar, a former Union minister in charge of food, beside having been a state chief minister, talks to Sanjeeb Mukherjee on these and related matters. Edited excerpts:

The committee has suggested outsourcing of FCI storage facilities to the central and state warehousing corporations and to private players. Critics have alleged backdoor entry of big private logistics companies, at the expense of FCI.

We've said stocking operations should be handed over to CWC, SWC or private companies through competitive bidding. If in that, private companies participate and are better than others, what is the harm in this? We have to encourage competition in this sector, so that the quality of storage improves. FCI's operations are not being privatised under the guise of this report, nor is it being divided.

One of your suggestions is to limit legal entitlement under the National Food Security Act to 40 per cent of the population, as against the current norm of 67 per cent. A section feels this will kill the law.

We felt 67 per cent coverage is too much. Many who should not get cheap food will get it when the Act is fully implemented. I have seen during my tenure as Union food minister how foodgrain allocation for the Above Poverty Line category does not get lifted and is sold in the black market. While limiting the coverage, we have advocated that those eligible get seven kg of grain per person as against the current five kg. This 40 per cent will include those covered under the Antyodaya Anna Yojana.

How can you reach a conclusion on the ill-effects of the Act, when it has not been implemented in more than half the states?

That is the whole question. When the Act has not yet been implemented, it means states have difficulty in identifying the poor. Therefore, we have suggested that instead of covering almost 70 per cent of India, why not cover those who actually need it and give them more than the current entitlement?

Your party, the BJP, when in opposition had supported the Bill to make this law. A senior of your party in Lok Sabha had assured that if voted back to power, the BJP will bring a better Act.

At the time of framing of the Act, too, there were many in the BJP who felt the coverage was on the higher side. We might have supported it due to electoral compulsion. Now that a committee has been constituted, we did a rethink and found the law too open-ended. You can always correct the wrong. One cannot always keep the mind closed.