Hi friends,
What follows is a brief dicussion on food security bill including the inputs given by Prof Reetika Khera in our Tuesday Night Discussion on 24 Jan.
Discussion started of with a presentation given by Nishi Dixit making the audience aware about what exactly food security bill was and then Reetika Khera ma'am was welcomed to present her views.
First of all,she told us about the present scenario of PDS in our country and then what was Food Security Bill and how it differed with PDS which has been a common doubt in our google group discussions.Then she ended up discussing about NREGA and various questions raised up by the students.Here is brief synopsis:
PDS in India has not worked very well .It was meant for assuring food security to poor but was not successful in providing food security to the poor.In fact as pointed out in the discussion that poor people didn't had BPL card while rich people had which clearly shows how it dwindled away from its path.Poor were left out of PDS mainly due to corrupt political practices.For instance in Bihar around 2004-05 90% of the food grains were not able to reach the poor people which means that out of the stock of food grains which is alloted for their food security they were only able to consume 10% of it .This clearly represents the failure of PDS in India.
Although lately things have improved a lot and in Jharkhand for instance this diversion of food grain has came down from 85% to 46%.Although 46% is still a bad figure as almost half of the food is being diverted and is not reaching the people it is meant for.Also Orissa has shown decline in diversion from 75% to 30%.What all this suggests is that there is a possibility to fix the system and hence a possibility for improved standards of nutrition for the poor people which we cannot deny ( presently) is in worst condition.
Difference Between PDS and Food Security Bill:
PDS is well known as Public Distribution System which helps to provide food grains at subsidised rate to the poor people .
On the other hand Food security bill is extension of PDS and basically adopts a lifecycle approach which consists of provisions not only for poor people but for children and mothers separately.There are many important things that food security bill provides whereas PDS is not able to provide them.For instance take the time when a child is born.When mothers are pregnant they have special nutrition requirements which cannot be only fulfilled by food grains distributed through PDS system and hence a major proportion of our children from poor families are born undernourished.So it is very important to take care of nutritional requirement of mothers so as to improve health status of our country.Also there should be programmes so that children are provided with better nutrition upto the age of 6 years as to ensure that children are not undernourished .There has also been a scheme called Integrated Child Development Programmealso known as "Aanganvadi".
So in short Food Security Bill is integration of mid-day meals for children ,PDS for poor people ,Maternity benefits for mothers and other programmes.So what it ensures is that it provides a legal entitlement and thus it will help the provisions which are granted to actually reach the poor people.
Ma'am said she also considered the fact that 1 lakh crores which was provided for Food Security Bill was a large amount but it was still 1.2% of our GDP (whereas other countries spend a much larger proportion of GDP on health schemes) so the money is not actually the problem.The only problem is that it should well spent and should not get entangled by corruption.
In the end we discussed on Cash versus Food debate and NREGA with Ma'am.In cash versus food debate there are certain provisions like pensions which are fine with cash provisions while others like food security is not at all fine.Ma'am read out various reactions of people about what they wanted cash or food.They wanted food more than cash due to many of the reasons.Main reasons were
1:inflation which may decrease their capacity to buy,
2:money as can be used to buy other things may be spent by these people on other items and
3:among the women folk there was a concern that it would make their husbands to spent this money not on food but other usless items like liquor etc.
Lastly,there was more or less an informal session where most people asked questions to Reetika Khera ma'am.
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