PMO panel for food Bill worries activists

Fear dilution of proposals, in favour of pro-market and anti-PDS views.

The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council’s advice on a right to food law will now go through the scrutiny of a committee appointed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, comprising economists and Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, besides secretaries of three ministries.

This news, given at its meeting last week, has dismayed food rights’ activists, who fear a check on the clout of the NAC. However, some NAC members deny this and say there has been no clipping NAC’s wings and it was just a routine procedure.

NAC member Jean Dreze, who’d earlier sent a dissent note on the proposed Bill not ebing strong enough, has expressed concern. “The government is entitled to scrutinise the recommendations. However, the loaded composition of this committee is a matter of concern. Social policy is too important to be left to economists,’’ he said.

The committee is headed by the chief of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, C Rangarajan. It also has Ahluwalia, Chief Economic Advisor to the finance ministry, Kaushik Basu, expenditure secretary Sushma Nath, agriculture secretary P K Basu and food secretary B C Gupta.

“It is the Prime Minister’s men versus Sonia Gandhi’s NAC,’’ said Kavita Srivastava of the Right to Food Campaign, in which Dreze and fellow NAC members Harsh Mander and Aruna Roy are active.

“It does not look appropriate that one committee will now examine the findings of another committee. It will lower the prestige of Sonia Gandhi, who heads the NAC, as it makes it appear as if the Prime Minister does not trust the wisdom of the Council,” she said.

NAC member Deep Joshi told Business Standard the committee was only meant to look at the proposals on the food Bill and not on all proposals of the NAC.

“I don’t know the terms of reference and whether it would look at all proposals of the NAC or just the proposals on the food Bill. But food Bill it certainly will examine. It is an important issue. Let everyone look at it. A month’s delay does not matter,” said NAC member N C Saxena.

Whether it would mean changes in the proposals, Saxena, also a Supreme Court-appointed commissioner on the right to food, said: “I don’t know. Maybe they will improve it.”

Worries Biraj Patnaik, advisor to the Supreme Court commissioners on the right to food: “The whole exercise is to bring in cash transfers instead of foodgrains as part of the food Bill. While the Planning Commission in its presentation on the Bill earlier had sought dismantling of the Public Distribution System and replacing it with cash transfers, Kaushik Basu has been an ardent advocate of cash transfers.”

The main objective of the committee would be to synchronise the NAC proposals with the proposals of Kaushik Basu on the same subject, food campaign activists said.

Jean Dreze’s note of dissent on the Bill proposed by the NAC, which differed from the unanimous view arrived at by the council members, had sought universalisation of the PDS. The NAC view was to provide 35 kg of foodgrains per head per month to 46 per cent of the poor in rural areas and 26 per cent of poor in urban areas. It suggested another 20 kg of foodgrain at half the market price to 40 per cent in rural areas and 20 per cent in urban areas.