Print Close Window
A platter of blather
Pratap Bhanu Mehta
Posted online: Fri Jan 21 2011, 02:04 hrs
The debate over food security is becoming an exercise in callow dissimulation, where we devote our energies toensure that food security remains a mirage. The core objective should be simple. It is a scandal that after twodecades of high growth, India still does not make adequate nutrition available to large sections of the population.There is simply no financial, technological or production related reason why this should be so. UPA-II decides tomake food security a priority. But just see how the issues play out. We have become so self-referential, and so clever by half that we often don’t even notice the ironic enormity of what we are saying. Speaking the truth has become away of avoiding reality.So let us cut through the chase. When the stories about rotting foodgrains broke, and the question arose “Whyfoodgrains should not be distributed?”, the response went something like this. The minister of agriculture said thiswas impossible. The chief economic advisor, with his characteristic clarity, claimed something to the effect that wesimply did not have the mechanisms to release and distribute food. Perhaps there was an element of analyticalhonesty in this claim. But the shock is that we were not shocked by it. What was the government in effect saying?That after decades of procurement, food subsidies of Rs 50,000 crore a year, we simply had no mechanism todistribute grains we procured. This should be the mother of all scandals. But we patted ourselves on the back for our capacity for sophisticated economic thinking.Then prime minister’s Economic Advisory Council says we cannot procure enough foodgrains without distorting themarket seriously. So here we are: one part of government says it cannot distribute and another says it cannotprocure. Now at this point, to put it crudely, our response should have been, if you pardon the language, “What thehell CAN government do? Why does it even exist?” But we try to find a more sophisticated way around.The sophisticated response had three parts. The first was the Planning Commission (PC). Under some argumentabout feasibility it shoots down the idea that universalisation of food security is possible. This should have been ascandal for several reasons. First, as the JNU economist, Himanshu, has pointed out in a series of papers, the PC’snumbers on both grain requirement and cost are at the very least debatable. Second, the PC, if it genuinely has anyrole, should have at least had the courtesy of proposing an alternative scheme that met the core objectives. Instead, itacted as if its raison d’etre was not alleviating poverty, but saying no.Then comes the NAC. There are some members of NAC whose arguments have an internal intellectual integrity. Buta lot of what NAC proposes is more about feeling good than doing right. It underplays design issues. Now it backsdown under pressure and moves away from universalisation. In order to do so, it creates a new flimsy classification of different groups. But the construction of BPL lists is the biggest normative and practical hoax we have played onIndia’s poor. It is deeply wishful thinking that even more sophisticated classifications and entitlements will beimplementable. And now that RTE admissions to elite schools may be linked to BPL lists, the incentive to game
1/23/2011 www.indianexpress.com/story-print/740…indianexpress.com/story-print/740417/ 1/2
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
Indian Express - 21 Jan 2011 - A Platter of Blather
178
Reads
1
Readcasts
34
Embed Views
More From This User
Notes
Load more
