 "Is the Food Ordinance old wine in new bottle?")
The government’s Food Security Ordinance, promulgated by President Pranab Mukherjee on Friday, is a big social welfare initiative as it guarantees legal right to food for the first time. A closer look on some of the provisions of the Ordinance and the existing targeted public distribution system (TPDS), however, reveals that apart from the legal entitlement and price reduction, there is little difference between the existing scheme and the food subsidy programme.
What the Food Ordinance does in short is to expand the provisions of the current Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), which is targeted at the poorest of the poor and grant the same benefits, except for the quantity, to below and above poverty line (BPL and APL) families as well, merging the latter in the process and giving all a legal right.
The legal entitlement part, of course, is a big differentiator, along with the grievance redressal mechanism, which will allow a beneficiary to lodge a complaint for not getting his or her quota of monthly ration, which the current TPDS does not allow.
Apart from these, much of provisions of the Food Ordinance are similar to the current TPDS. For example, the total beneficiaries of the TPDS is 65.2 million BPL families, which also includes 250 million beneficiaries under the Antodaya Anna Yojana and 110.5 million APL families, making a total of around 175 million families.
Assuming that the average total number of members in each family is 4.5, almost 800 million people are presently covered under the TPDS. The Food Ordinance promises to cover 67 per cent of the population, which in any case means almost 800-810 million people (out of a total population of 1.2 billion) will be covered.
The total allotment of grains (wheat and rice) under the current TPDS as on 2012-13 is 62.6 million tonnes (mt), which includes 35.6 mt of rice and around 27 mt of wheat. With the Ordinance being in force, the government’s estimated requirement of foodgrains will be 61.2 mt. At present, the government determines a cap on the number of poor in each state by applying the 1992-93 poverty estimates on a population of 2000.
What the Food Ordinance does in short is to expand the provisions of the current Antodaya Anna Yojana (AAY), which is targeted at the poorest of the poor and grant the same benefits, except for the quantity, to below and above poverty line (BPL and APL) families as well, merging the latter in the process and giving all a legal right.
The legal entitlement part, of course, is a big differentiator, along with the grievance redressal mechanism, which will allow a beneficiary to lodge a complaint for not getting his or her quota of monthly ration, which the current TPDS does not allow.
Apart from these, much of provisions of the Food Ordinance are similar to the current TPDS. For example, the total beneficiaries of the TPDS is 65.2 million BPL families, which also includes 250 million beneficiaries under the Antodaya Anna Yojana and 110.5 million APL families, making a total of around 175 million families.
Assuming that the average total number of members in each family is 4.5, almost 800 million people are presently covered under the TPDS. The Food Ordinance promises to cover 67 per cent of the population, which in any case means almost 800-810 million people (out of a total population of 1.2 billion) will be covered.
The total allotment of grains (wheat and rice) under the current TPDS as on 2012-13 is 62.6 million tonnes (mt), which includes 35.6 mt of rice and around 27 mt of wheat. With the Ordinance being in force, the government’s estimated requirement of foodgrains will be 61.2 mt. At present, the government determines a cap on the number of poor in each state by applying the 1992-93 poverty estimates on a population of 2000.
For example, in Andhra Pradesh, the Centre accepts that there are four million BPL families, which also included AAY beneficiaries, while the state claims the number is 20.15 million families. In Karnataka, the Centre claims the number of BPL families is 3.13 million, but the state puts the figure at 10.1 million. In Tamil Nadu, the Centre allocates its foodgrains estimating 4.86 million BPL families are there, while the state claims the number is 19.7 million.
The Ordinance, while keeping the allocation under AAY at 35 kg per family, brings it down for BPL from 35 kg per family per month to 25 kg per month. The price at which it would be sold will be almost Rs 2-3 per kg less than the current rate.
As some activities point out, in the current TPDS, a two-member family got 35 kg of grains per month and a 10-member family also got the same amount as allocation on per family basis, but in the Food Security Ordinance, allocations will be on the basis of each individual. So, a family of only two members will now get 10 kg of foodgrains each month instead of 35 kg, while a nine-member family will get 45 kg. “Apart from the legal angle, what the Food Security Ordinance will ensure is that states, henceforth, will be compelled to lift the grain allocated by the Centre every month, which at least for APL was not the case in many states,” a senior social activist pointed out.
As far as giving coarse cereals or pulses and oilseeds along with grains is concerned, in the current TPDS, too, state governments are free to distribute items other than that supplied by the Centre to the beneficiaries and some like Kerala are already doing so.