Cong may fall back on NREGA to achieve right-to-food promise

NEW DELHI: Drought may prove to be the Congress��� biggest obstacle to the ambitious election promise of Right to Food, even as confusion confounds over the number of potential beneficiaries. As the food law hangs fire, the UPA government may have no option but to rely heavily on the existing PDS and NREGA for ensuring a modicum of food security in a distress year. Acutely aware of the political pressure to deliver, the party is understood to have favoured dispensing food grains as a part of the payment component for NREGA.

���The substantial rise in the number of poor creates more trouble for the government. There are no perfect assessments, but these numbers put more pressure on a government that is already dealing with distress arising from a drought situation. It makes the food security law unviable in the current circumstances,��� an economist said.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh���s claim of foodgrains availability for 13 months, ostensibly for BPL and Antodaya Scheme requirements, is based on current offtake. The government will need to factor in a larger beneficiary group than the one it has been considering for its offtake projections. The drought, the worst in the last seven years, will mean an increase in numbers forced towards social welfare schemes. National Commission of Farmers chairman, MS Swaminathan points out that small and marginal farmers will turn in bulk to NREGA for livelihood. Given the increased pressures, Mr Swaminathan has suggested that NREGA be open-ended for the current year, thus doing away with the annual 100 day per family limit. Economists like Surubhi Mittal of the ICRIER reiterate this: ���Our projections of future demand are based on current demand levels. But this will change with price and circumstance���.

Arjun Sengupta, chairman of the National Commission for Enterprises in Unorganised Sector, whose report found that 77% of the population lives on Rs 20 or less per day, argues for a new development paradigm, which focuses on creating jobs. He argues that even at subsidised rates, as suggested in the proposed food law, a large majority would be left out as they do not have the purchasing power. This exclusion is likely to be exacerbated in a drought year. ���The prime minister claimed of having enough food grain so that no one will die of starvation. The real problem is the lack of purchasing power of a large section���, Mr Sengupta said. Given the additional hardship the drought will place on the poor, the government should focus on creating job for poor people and not on jobless growth.

While there is no clarity on the percentage of persons who can be termed as poor, it is clear that this is way above the figure the government has been working with. At present, the government estimates the percentage of rural poor to be 28.5% of rural population in 2004-05. The draft report of the Planning Commission appointed expert group, headed by Suresh Tendulkar, puts this figure at 42%. While this bolsters the states��� claims of large unrecorded BPL families, it puts additional pressure on the Central government.

Economists like Mittal argue that the right to food should not be shelved. ���The present PDS has been criticised a lot, but it is at least reaching someone. The government needs to draw lessons from the cases of successful implementation of these programmes while framing the proposed Act,��� Mittal said.

A problem which the government faces in making good on its poll promise is that strategies have not been streamlined. The Food Security Act premises itself on two factors, the first is the number of intended beneficiaries, and second, the overstocking of the FCI gowdowns. On the first, there is no clarity yet as to the exact number except for the assumption that the number of intended beneficiaries is much greater than currently assessed. On availability of stocks, Mittal says that there is a need to have better and realistic projections. ���Our projections of future demand is not based on the public distribution system envisaged in the proposed law. If prices are brought down to Rs 3 per kg, then even the poorest could alter their consumption pattern. This would immediately change the future demand projection,��� she argues.

The Congress would like to make the food security law the cornerstone of UPA-II just as NREGA was for the last government. The drought situation throws up crucial question of sustaining the legal entitlement to food and this is what food right activists want the government to focus on.