The food Bill will correct the cropping pattern imbalance: Reetika Khera

Interview with Development Economist

Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi professor and development economist Reetika Khera tells Sreelatha Menon that the food Bill may not be a leap ahead, but it is certainly a step forward

The food Bill is a guarantee for lifelong dependence on government doles. As an economist, can one defend such a policy?
The food Bill should be seen as an investment. "Labour" is India's most important asset. In that sense, health care, education and food expenditures should be seen as investments, and not as "doles". Further, India is not unique in putting in place these welfare systems. It is only joining - rather belatedly - many countries, including other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa), in putting in place such systems.

Has the food Bill missed a historic opportunity?

Remember, the Congress manifesto promised just "25kg at Rs 3/kg" for the poor. From there, the Bill has come a long way - it includes ICDS [Integrated Child Development Services], Mid Day Meal and maternity entitlements. The PDS [public distribution system] will be expanded to cover 75 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent in urban areas. It makes a half-hearted attempt at a "life cycle approach". Half-hearted, because, the food Bill dropped old age and widow pensions, and community kitchens for the destitute. In other ways, too, the Bill does not go far enough - for example, some of the children's entitlements that are protected by the Supreme Court orders are not part of the Bill. The Bill may not be a leap ahead, but it is certainly a step forward.

Since ICDS is now part of the food security Bill, how do you think the government can ensure that every child who needs care benefits from it?
ICDS is a good example of the sort of improvements in many food schemes in the past decade. In many parts of the country, it used to be defunct - if you walked into a village and asked where the anganwadi is, people would give you a blank look. That has started to change. Odisha has started giving children a morning snack and a cooked meal at the anganwadi. Along with the Supreme Court scrutiny, public pressure, media attention, increased budgetary allocations (for staff, infrastructure and food) have contributed to the improvements. Yet, this is among the weakest programmes in the food Bill basket. Much more needs to be done, especially since we have enough evidence to suggest that to fight undernutrition. We need to reach children under the age of three, and ICDS is the only government programme that reaches them.

What impact will the food Bill have on the agricultural sector? Would it not lead to state monopoly in the food grain market?
While the agriculture policy needs a close and hard look, the food Bill does not prevent that from happening. In fact, the Bill could be an opportunity to correct an existing imbalance in the current cropping pattern: for instance, the food Bill allows millets (bajra, jowar, ragi) and maize through the PDS. Millets are nutritionally superior to wheat and rice, the economic cost is nearly half of paddy, and are better suited for dry-rainfed agricultural conditions here.

The government procures just under one-third of the total production. The bulk of food grain trade is in the private sector and it will remain there. This is because the current allocation for the schemes covered by the food Bill is about 56 million tonne [mt] of grain; this will increase to approximately 62 mt - an increase of just four mt.

What about local food grain banks that agriculturists like Devinder Sharma have been asking for?
The food Bill contains enabling provisions to encourage decentralisation. The Decentralised Procurement Scheme has picked up since 2003-04. It encourages procurement of grain away from the traditional states (Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh). Between 2003-04 and 2011-12, the share of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in paddy procurement has come down from half to about one-third. One-fifth of paddy procurement now happens in Chhattisgarh and Odisha. Nearly all the wheat procurement (96 per cent) used to be in just three states (Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh); their share is now down to 75 per cent; wheat procurement has picked up in Madhya Pradesh (up from one per cent to 18 per cent). In this sense (and in other ways), the food Bill doesn't do anything very new, but builds on positive experiences of the past decade.

How much flexibility does the Bill provide to the states?
The Bill allows some flexibility to the states. For example, the states will develop their own criteria to identify whom to exclude from the PDS. But it could have gone further. For instance, the Bill proposes to adopt a "per capita" approach - some states, such as Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, have a reasonably good system using the "per household" approach, and they ought to be given the choice between those two options.

Pronab Sen recently said the debate was wrong - it should be about creating "food-cum-cash transfer" rather than "food or cash transfer"?

In a survey in nine states in 2011, we asked PDS beneficiaries what they thought of the proposal of replacing food with cash. Two-thirds were vehemently opposed to the idea and they gave us good reasons for their choice - erosion of purchasing power with inflation, lack of faith in the ability and intention of the government to index the cash amount to inflation rates, poor access to markets and banking infrastructure, increase in their transaction costs (for example, trips to the bank and market to withdraw cash and buy food), and so on. Most importantly though, people were still haunted by the spectre of hunger and valued the PDS grain for this reason.

In fact, all states except Bihar and Delhi have opposed cash. A hasty move could lead to all sorts of problems, including localised shortage of grain and inflation, the cash landing up in the wrong hands - all of this would undermine food security. Certain cash transfers, such as maternity entitlements (also in the food Bill), are welcome. It is hard to comment on Sen's proposal without studying the details, as described by you, it appears to be administratively infeasible given the weak administrative capability in so many rural areas.

Sen also defends unique identification (or UID) cards as a way to provide identity proof to every citizen and, thus, include all of them.

UID is just an identity document and by itself, it guarantees access to no government benefits. The way the government is going about it, UID is likely to make the lives of poor more difficult, access more difficult. Let me explain. In January, "direct benefit transfers" were rolled out in the pilot districts. Here UID has, de facto, been made compulsory (i.e. a necessary condition) to get, say, old age pensions. An old person who earlier got her pension in her bank account, can now only get it only if she manages to under the paperwork to enrol for a UID number. Put yourself in the shoes of a 70-year-old widow, who has to arrange all this paperwork in a remote village of Jharkhand. Elsewhere too, say, in Udaipur, Rajasthan (a pilot district) and Buldhana, Maharashtra (not a pilot district), a false impression has been created that "get a UID number, otherwise you will not get your existing entitlements in the future". Something that was meant to be a "facility" can easily turn into a calamity for such people.