Food Bill likely to be placed before Cabinet next week

The Centre is likely to tweak the proposed food security Bill to accommodate the views of states. Many states had wanted variable exclusion of beneficiaries, instead of uniform exclusion.

This means that poor states will have more people within the ambit of the Bill, compared to rich states. The Centre will still determine the national coverage of 75 per cent of rural and 50 per cent of urban area and allocate it state-wise. States will then determine the exclusion criteria in consistence with this.

According to officials, the final Bill will provide legal entitlement for cheap foodgrains for other welfare programmes such as Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS). The Bill will also provide pregnant women and lactating mothers an allowance of Rs 1,000 a month for six months up to the birth of the second child.

An earlier proposal to include 90 per cent of population in 13 poor states and 75 per cent of entire population in 250 backward districts has not been made part of the final note, officials said.

The food department has cleared the final note on the Bill, and will soon submit before the Cabinet for final approval around March 18, to give ample time for the revised Bill to be presented in Parliament.

Chief ministers of states such as Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh (UP) had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressing concern about uniform exclusion. UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said the criteria is unfair to a poor state like his, which has a larger share of people below the poverty line (BPL). He pointed out how the Tendulkar committee had shown that UP had 37.7 per cent BPL families as against the national average of 29.8 percent. Besides, the per capita income of UP for 2009-10 stood at Rs 23,392, while the national average was Rs 46,117. Yadav demanded 100 per cent coverage for the rural population and 95 per cent for urban.

Development economist Jean Dreze told Business Standard: “Foodgrain allocations under the BPL quota are based on poverty estimates. Hopefully, exclusion ratios under the National Food Security Act will be adjusted state-wise based on a similar principle. Uniform exclusion would be grossly unfair to the poorer states and would defeat the purpose of the Bill.”

Chhattisgarh CM Raman Singh wrote that the Centre should limit itself to determining clear and verifiable exclusion criteria and should not fix the limits. Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, too, questioned the rationale of fixing a uniform criteria for all states.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT

• Food Bill to have variable exclusion limit
• Integrated Child Development Scheme to be part of food Bill
• Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh had opposed uniform exclusion