A ploy to deceive the poor and enrich the profiteers
One year after setting up of the 2nd National Advisory Council (NAC), the brainchild of the Congress President Sonia Gandhi (whose is also the chairperson of the NAC) , which is sort of a engagement between the government and civil society on revival of basic social services and rights of marginalized groups, the recent government draft proposal on the National Food Security Bill constitutes a betrayal from the stated goal of universalization of Public Distribution Service (PDS) and in effect dismantling the existing system. The extreme ineffectiveness and inadequacy of the current system notwithstanding, the government draft favoring direct cash transfer instead of the current system of providing certain essential food commodities (at subsidized rates) such as rice, wheat, sugar, cooking oil, kerosene through the fair price (ration) shops, is in tune with the government’s aggressive line on neo – liberal reforms and further slavishly toeing the agenda of the World Bank and IMF through targeting.
Targeting the poor with austerity cuts
One of the immediate tasks of the aggressive neo-liberalism that was brought in in the 1990’s was to scale down the Public Distribution System (PDS). Nearly 15 years after dismantling of what used to be universal PDS to a targeted approach of providing subsidized food commodities (excepting in Kerala and Tamil Nadu where the remnants of the old system still exist) to a certain marginalized sections of society – Below poverty Line (BPL) and Above Poverty Line (APL), has led to large section of the population excluded and discriminated from the benefit of PDS. In the new draft, there is is also the talk of doing away with the APL & BPL altogether, and bringing instead the so called ‘priority’ and ‘general’ category (‘old wine in new bottle’) which will only complicate and bureaucratize matters and is nothing more than another devious method of the government to kill the legislation at its infancy.
It is anti-women and anti-children
Direct cash transfer is nothing more than incentive for the private players in the market (coming in the wake of proposals to increase FDI in retail) and completely shuts out any government role in providing subsidized food. The beneficiaries of this scheme will not be protected from the vagaries of the market such as price rise unlike direct supply in kind which is inflation proof. It will also lead to cornering of the money by the certain members of the family, given the unequal position of women and girl children in countries like India. And another reason why the government do not want universalization is the marked effect this will have on reducing food prices, which of course goes against the very philosophy of the free market profiteers.
While the amount to be transfered for each beneficiary is yet to be disclosed, the fact that the existing system hardly qualifies in meeting nutritional requirements, brings into serious doubt as to how much of the nutritional requirement will this proposed cash transfer cover? The explanation from the government side for not universalizing PDS and introducing conditional transfers is that they do not have enough cash and to do away with corruption in the existing PDS, smacks in the face of its over zealous commitments in subsidizing the corporates (pegged at 5 lakh crore between 2009-10, more than 5 times the budget required for universalizing of PDS ), exporting of food grains as cattle fodder at lesser price than sold at the ration shops, privatizing the retail trade etc., which is even bigger corruption scandal compared to the ones in the PDS.
Oppose and defeat this profiteers plot
All these exercises such as engagement of civil society through National Advisory Council (NAC), or the drafting of the Lokpal Bill is nothing more than an excercise in futilty and is a way for the government in getting around the task of providing basic social services such as health, education, employment, universal PDS etc by either providing sub standard and underfunded services or routing it through the governments neo liberal agenda. While the civil society activists in the Right to Food campaign might have set themselves the enviable task of achieving ‘food for all’, but what these campaigners and activists ought to realize is unless their campaigns are linked to the overall goal doing away with the system based on capitalism and landlordism especially its latest avatar of Liberalization, Privatization and Globalization (LPG), the system will by hook or crook try to distort every pro people legislation to pursue its own ends. In the name of Civil society the cheer leaders of capitalism cannot represent the poor and working class, they have no idea of how people live.
This system of profiteers is incapable of solving any fundamental problems faced by the people, it can only further aggravate the problems of poverty and hunger along with other fundamental challenges. Only a system which is people centric and not profit centric can attempt to solve or bring in meaningful reforms to these problems of the masses. Only a responsive, sustainable, utterly democratic socialist system is the need that we all need to focus on and build for it.
Trade Unions, community organizations and peoples’ movements should build a strong resistance against this profiters plot.
*APL and BPL categorization is a fraud.
*A more comprehensive Universal PDS should come in place.
*Cash transfer for food must be vigorously opposed and defeated.