Draft passed unanimously; disagreements may be sorted out by a standing committee.
The Union Cabinet tonight cleared the much-awaited draft food security Bill, brightening the prospect of providing legal entitlement of food to three-fourth of the country’s rural population and half its urban dwellers.
Food minister K V Thomas said a meeting of the cabinet that cleared the Bill also decided to introduce it in the current session of Parliament.
“The objective is to provide access to nutrition at affordable rates to citizens. The Bill will also bring within its fold a number of ongoing schemes,” he told reporters. The draft was passed “unanimously” with all ministers agreeing to the proposals.
| GRAIN MATTERS |
| * Bill aims at legal entitlement of cheap grains to 75% of rural and 50% of urban populace |
| * Of this, 46% of rural and 28% or urban people to be classified as priority, the rest as general category |
| * Priority category beneficiary to get 7 kg a month |
| * General category beneficiary to get 3-4 kg a month |
| * Bill for priority beneficiaries will be Rs 3/kg for rice, Rs 2/kg for wheat, Rs 1/kg for coarse grains |
| * Price for general category will be 50% of minimum support price |
| * Bill will hike average annual procurement to 60-65 million tonnes of grains, from 55-60. |
| * Food ministry estimates additional expenditure of Rs 51, 000 crore annually |
| * Agriculture ministry estimates the cost to cross Rs 200,000 crore |
| * Targeted public distribution system now gives subsidised grains to 6.52 crore Below Poverty Line and almost 11.05 crore Above Poverty Line families |
The meeting was convened for a second time in the last one week owing to differences between the ruling UPA allies and also within its main Congress party over some of the contents of the Bill. The last meeting on the matter saw agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party, opposing a huge subsidy that the proposed legislation would entail once Parliament passed it.
Some ministers were also concerned about the stringent opposition the draft Bill faced from states — largely because of a high cost burden they would have to bear. Tonight, the Centre was keen to persuade allies to arrive at an agreement on various sticking points in the Bill, sources said. Clearly, it did not want to further defer matter.
The government might still face hurdles, in which case it might leave all the areas of disagreement to a standing committee to resolve them.
Economist Jean Dreze welcomed the Bill’s approval on Sunday. “It is a step forward,” he said.
In the last one week, the Thomas had been holding a series of meetings with all senior ministers to convince them about the draft’s salient portions, including the impact of resultant subsidy burden.
Food ministry officials said the Bill would increase the expenditure burden by just Rs 51,000 crore annually, but an agriculture ministry official said the actual expenditure of running the programme would be more than Rs 200,000 crore, as it has to include enhanced budget provision of the agriculture ministry which needs to raise farm production to meet the obligations under the Bill.
The draft Bill, as formulated by the food ministry, seeks to divide allocations among priority and general categories. The latter comprise those who are not considered poor as per a sociology economic census that is being done to identify the poor.
While 46 per cent households in rural areas will be classified as priority category, the percentage will be 28 in urban areas.
Priority-category classification is similar to the current concept of BPL (below the poverty line), but with much wider coverage. The remaining will be classified as general-category households, which is similar to the current APL (above the poverty line).
A priority-category household will have each of its member supplied with 7 kilograms of grains per month, while the figure will be 3 or four kg in the case of general-category households.
Rice will be given to priority sector households at Rs 3 per kg, wheat at Rs 2 per kg and coarse cereals at Rs 1 per kg, while the same will be given to general-category household grains at a price related to the minimum support price.
At present, the targeted public distribution system provides subsidised grains to around 6.52 crore BPL families and almost 11.05 crore APL families. Once the Bill is in operation, the country’s average annual procurement will have to rise to 60-65 million tonnes as against the current 55-60 million tonne grains.
It was in July that an empowered Group of Ministers cleared the draft food bill, following which major changes like incorporating a provision for providing free meals and an allowance of Rs 1,000 per month for six months to pregnant women and lactating mothers was included — at the insistence of Congress President Sonia Gandhi.
