Food security bill

[Clarke]

New Delhi: The Union cabinet, which met on Sunday evening, cleared the Food Security Bill. The Bill, which had the backing of UPA Chiairperson Sonia Gandhi, will cover 63.5 per cent of the total population. I will cover 75 per cent of total rural population of which 46 per cent would be priority households. In urban areas of the 50 per cent of total population, 28 would be priority households. The Bill could be tabled in Parliament as early as Monday. Minister of State for Agriculture KV Thomas said, "Introduced in this session. Then it will go to the Standing Committee." Earlier, around 30 activists staged a protest outside Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's residence in New Delhi on Sunday evening demanding immediate passage of Right to Food Bill. A senior police official said the activists were detained and taken to police station. The meeting was originally scheduled for Monday but advanced to Sunday evening, sources said. The Food Security Bill aims to provide legal entitlement to subsidised foodgrain to 63.5 per cent of the country's population. Central Food Minister KV Thomas on Friday had said, "Sonia Gandhi has taken a lot of interest in the Food Security Bill, so we are following her instructions." The cabinet in it's last meet had deferred the decision primarily because of concerns on finanicial viability of the bill raised by Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. Pawar had also pointed out at the continued pilferage of the Public Distribution System (PDS). The bill that proposes to make right to food a legal right, if passed will provide subsidised foodgrain & guarantee rice at Rs 3 per kg, wheat at Rs 2 per kg and millet at Rs 1 per kg. For priority households, it will guarantee 7 kg per person or 35 kg per household and for non priority households, it is 3 kg per person. The bill if passed guarantee food security to 63 per cent of India's Population. It will cover 75 per cent of rural population and 50 per cent of urban area population. But its silent on the big question - from where will the required money of almost 1 lakh crore come to provide food for the needy, that's not all - here are several other unanswered questions aswell. How will the priority and the general groups mentioned in the bill be identified? No time frame has been set for determining the target groups, Socio economic and caste census data is awaited for 2011 - which is already behind schedule. How will the coordination mechanism between the Centre and the States work? The proposal does not specify is investments required for augmenting storage, freight capacity given that the railways is already stretched. The government plans to introduce it in the ongoing Winter Session. With just a few months left for assembly elections in crucial states of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, the Congress clearly doesn't want to be seen going back on a promise made by its President. Once the Cabinet approves the bill, the Food Ministry would finalise the draft Bill and try to introduce it in the winter session of Parliament, as promised. After introduction, the Bill is expected to go to the Parliamentary Standing Committee and the UPA government would try to get it passed in the budget session, sources said. http://ibnlive.in.com/news/union-cabinet-clears-food-security-bill/213062-37-64.html ======================== Well intentioned .. Will it work ? Who's paying for it ? Do we have enough food production or are we importing ?

[surajmal]

another blackhole for money.

[cowboysfan]

Is there any govt initiative to slow down the population growth? we cannot afford to feed this many people and a big famine is going to be real bad in India.

[ganeshran]

this is yet another well meaning scheme which will turn into a huge expenditure with little results and loads of corruption where is the government getting the money for so many social welfare schemes when we are running such a high deficit and the possibility of a crisis looms before us.

[G_B_]

we cant afford it

[Stuge]

Let see how many people are really feed under Food Security Bill or else its another outlet for corruption in the making .

[surajmal]

True cost of Dynasty: Sonia sends us a Rs 5,45,000 cr bill http://www.firstpost.com/politics/true-cost-of-dynasty-sonia-sends-us-a-rs-545000-cr-bill-159602.html/2

True cost of Dynasty: Sonia sends us a Rs 5,45,000 cr bill

UPA-2 is hastening our tryst with economic disaster.

The Bill will result in the following dangers: 1) It will damage the exchequer and stoke inflation causing the subsidy bill to go higher and higher every year, leading to a pile-up of debts. India will be Greece by 2014. 2) The huge procurement targets needed to feed 75 percent of rural households and 50 percent or urban ones will call for regular increases in food procurement prices. This will again feed inflation. 3) If the monsoon fails in any particular year, we will have to import grain. International food prices are already well above Indian levels. If we enter the market which we have seldom done prices will go through the roof. High imports will send the rupee crashing raising prices again. This is a recipe for disaster. 4) High procurement means closing down three-fourths of the market system in grains since the government becomes a monopoly buyer everywhere. 5) Both poor and rich farmers will try to game the system. If the market gets you a price of Rs 20 a kg for rice, and you can get 35 kg of rice per family per month at Rs 3, who will not buy from the PDS and sell to the market? This is cash transfer by another name: graft will be the only result. 6) The massive bill of Rs 6,00,000 crore for the FSB over three years is essentially money down the drain. It works against the fundamental argument about teaching someone to fish as against feeding him indefinitely. It will create dependencies, when the amount could have been spent to create rural infrastructure to improve agricultural productivity, and incomes. What we have essentially done is consumed the seedcorn of the future by spending money to feed instead of investing in rural infrastructure.

Again Jai Ho Sonia Madam.

[Clarke]

Is there any govt initiative to slow down the population growth? we cannot afford to feed this many people and a big famine is going to be real bad in India.

The Food Security Bill also promises hot, mid-day meals for children up to 14 years of age and Rs 6,000 for all pregnant and lactating women, all this will now be a legal entitlement.

There u go, incentive to raise population :desiman:

[Sachin=GOD]

Press Trust of India ‏@PTI_News Cabinet approves promulgating ordinance to implement the Food Security Bill.

[zumi]

stupid old b!tch Sonia Gandhi is going to kill the growth of India.

[Sachin=GOD]

New Delhi's Hunger Games A misguided plan to provide subsidized grain to 800 million people is emblematic of India's handout ethos.

With economic growth in the doldrums, the rupee hovering near a historic low and business confidence at rock bottom, you would think the Indian government has better things to do than roll out yet another controversial new subsidy. Think again. If the government has its way, it will go into next year's elections having passed a gargantuan food security law whose costs—economic, environmental and moral—will have to be paid down by future generations. The new law, which the government plans to pass in a special session of Parliament later this summer, will provide five kilograms of highly subsidized rice, wheat and other grains to two-thirds of India's population, or about 800 million people. The grains will be priced at between one and three rupees (2 to 5 cents) per kilogram, up to 90% below prevailing market prices. A giant state-owned company, the Food Corporation of India, will distribute them through a vast nationwide network of so-called "ration shops." If this sounds like something cooked up by a Soviet planner on a bad day, there's a reason for it. It came out of the limitless imagination of the National Advisory Council, a gaggle of activists and do-gooders who advise Sonia Gandhi, India's most powerful politician and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's boss. The food security law betrays the same false assumptions as the rest of an elaborate "rights" framework the government has erected over the past decade: that India's poor must be counted expansively rather than carefully, that they're looking for a handout rather than a hand up, and that government outlays matter more than outcomes. Other programs from the same stable of ideas include an expansive rural employment guarantee scheme (effectively a "right to dig ditches"), and a "right to education" policy that has sunk India's already abysmal math and reading scores (teachers aren't allowed to fail students). But even by these exalted standards, the food security bill marks a new low. To start with, it's unaffordable. The government claims the program will cost about $22 billion a year, or $4.5 billion more than an existing food subsidy program that covers 325 million people. But the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices, itself a government body, says the real cost may be high as $42 billion per year. Meanwhile, Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram is telling foreign business and government leaders that Delhi is serious about reining in its fiscal deficit (budgeted at 5.2% of GDP in the fiscal year ended March 31). It's hard to see how he can square that assertion with such a large new entitlement. Even if India could afford such spending, the program would still be illogical. Simply put, hunger is yesterday's battle. In 1983, 15% of Indians answered "yes" when asked if they had "been hungry in some or all months of the year." Thanks to rising incomes spurred by economic reforms begun in 1991, by 2005 the proportion of hungry Indians had fallen to 2%, or about 25 million people. So why doesn't government target aid at the truly needy who appear unable to help themselves, rather than spreading largesse to two-thirds of the population? And if ending malnutrition is the goal, then India ought to fix its woeful public sanitation and do a better job of educating citizens about a balanced diet. Again, a shortage of food grains is not the problem. Predictably enough, India's public distribution system is notoriously corrupt. By some estimates, up to half of the food grains procured by the government are siphoned off by middlemen before they reach their intended beneficiaries. Former Chief Economic Advisor Arvind Virmani has called the Food Corporation of India "one of the most inefficient and corrupt organizations in government." In India, that's saying something. According to news reports, over the past seven years just one state, West Bengal, has had to cancel more than six million fake cards used to buy grains allegedly meant for the poor. Why, then, has the government come up with such a harebrained idea? Quite simply, because India has failed to learn the lessons from its failed socialist past. Populist politicians enhance both their electoral prospects and their bank balances by hatching do-gooder schemes that leak like a sieve. Lawmakers who may privately disapprove hold their tongues for fear of being labeled anti-poor. The supposedly right-of-center Bharatiya Janata Party's main criticism of the bill: What took you so long? Meanwhile, a gaggle of leftist intellectuals who have never encountered a government handout they didn't like—such as Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze—have given the whole enterprise a veneer of respectability. Mr. Sen claims without evidence that children are dying each week the bill isn't passed. Such emotional arguments make a rational discussion of the subject virtually impossible. Ultimately though, someone must pay for the profligacy, and the costs aren't merely measured in dollars. Already the stench of corruption has brought tens of thousands to the street in protest over the past two years. As Indians grow richer, more and more ask themselves why they must emigrate to Singapore, the U.S. or Australia in order to live a productive life untouched by day-to-day corruption. Should Parliament make the mistake of rubber-stamping this awful food law, expect those lines at embassies of better-run nations to only grow longer. And count on the number of those betting on India to quickly snap out of its economic slump to dwindle further.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323393804578557050745156758.html

[bulbul]

For the sheer timing :hatsoff: 150+ seats guaranteed.

[FischerTal]

[Sachin=GOD]

I think the haste shown by Cong in passing an ordinance may be a sign that they want to go in for early (around Oct-Nov) elections :hmmm:

[Sachin=GOD]

Abhijit Majumder ‏@abhijitmajumder About 6 lakh sacks of foodgrain rot each month in FCI godowns of Punjab, Haryana, UP. Same godowns will bear burden of Food Security Bill

[Sachin=GOD]

Hindustan Times ‏@htTweets President signs Food Security ordinance: TV #ht

[FischerTal]

lol government cant even stop food rotting in the godowns and now this.

[Sachin=GOD]

[adi B]

lol government cant even stop food rotting in the godowns and now this.

the SC slammed the govn over the rotting of food issue in 2010.. the con party is playing a political gimmick to ensure large population of the rural areas fall for it. they dont have the expenditures,scheme to enact this bill,no storage facilities,public distribution is also slow ,the middlemen issue is another factor,in short this bill will add to another epic failure by the govn

[zumi]

this is just another corruption bail out fund. and even if by miracle the poor get some rice, they will sell it on the market for more money. this feckheads probably don't buy their own food, currently rice sells for Rs 15 per kg and the UPA wants to sell it to over 70% of Indian population for Rs 3 per kg.:hysterical: expect a flood of fake BPL IDs currently in print.