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| Sreelatha Menon: India's Fome Zero | | We can learn from Brazil's zero hunger programme |
| Sreelatha Menon / New Delhi Jun 28, 2009, 00:14 IST |
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The zero hunger programme that started in Brazil has tips for India, which is trying to put in place a right to food law.
When President Lula da Silva assumed charge of the government of Brazil in 2003, he vowed to wipe out hunger. On his first day, he launched a programme called Fome Zero, or Zero Hunger, based on distributing monthly food vouchers worth $18 to each family and a poverty alleviation programme.
When India’s party in power vowed to provide food grain at Rs 3 per kg to the poor and draft a right to food law, it was aiming at something close to that. Will it be the same? Will our aim of having a zero-hunger republic be fulfilled?
The targeted public distribution system (TPDS), which provides 35 kg food grain to those below poverty line (BPL) at Rs 4.5 per kg, attempts to achieve this. But the food grain have not been reaching the intended beneficiaries as government committees have admitted. That the deserving often don’t get included in the BPL list is another problem.
Can reducing the price of food grain to Rs 3 per kg change this? Hence, there are suggestions, both official and unofficial, to abandon TPDS, with some wanting the public distribution system (PDS) itself to go. The Abhijit Sen Committee had asked for abandoning the TPDS and going universal. Agricultural scientist Devender Sharma says carrying on with PDS is like nursing a cancerous foot. He wants food vouchers and food banks on the lines of Fome Zero. A third option is a PDS with vouchers.
Fome Zero entails vouchers combined with food banks, crop insurance, food procurement and creation of village markets. The income earned by 50 per cent of the families in the targeted areas of Northeast Brazil is under $2 per day, or $100 reais (Brazilian), per month. Fome Zero contributes around 32 reais per month per family. Brazil started in 2003 by defining poverty and identifying the beneficiaries, something India has been doing for some time, with mixed results.
Lula, who rose from being a shoe-shine boy and street vendor to unionism and politics, took advice from a body of farm experts, civil society and officials to focus on expansion of family farming and setting up village markets and grain banks.
Fome Zero beneficiaries are selected locally by committees on which members of the civil society comprise two-thirds of the numbers. This is unlike India’s method of a BPL percentage thrust from above on every village irrespective of the local needs. These committees also monitor the scheme.
Brazil’s crop insurance covers small farmers who have suffered crop losses and ensures they receive a guaranteed minimum income in six installments when they lose more than 50 per cent of their crop. Brazil also has a school meal programme which uses locally-produced food. No biscuits there.
But probably its biggest success has been the food banks where food donations get tax exemptions and concessions. Volkswagen, Nestlé, the Pão de Açúcar Group, Carrefour Brasília are leading donors.
For India, fighting hunger is not an untrodden path. It already has a mechanism for poverty estimates. Grain banks have also succeeded in parts of India, though never replicated. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme is already putting some money in the hands of the needy with every rural household today assured 100 days of paid work. An expansion would mean more than $20 per household. All India needs now is grain banks, group farming and village markets. And a decision whether vouchers or more PDS or vouchers under PDS is the way forward.
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