Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Chhattisgarh Food Security Bill 2012
Chhattisgarh Food Security Bill 2012
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Those who own over 4 hectares of irrigated or 8 hectares of non-irrigated land in non-scheduled areas
Given these conditions, only 10% of Chhattisgarh residents will be excluded, and 90% of the public will get the benefits of Food security.
Everyone who doesnt fall in above category, is covered under Food security bill.
The people are then classified into three categories and given benefits accordingly
household
Antyodaya
priority
General
foodgrain
35 kg for Rs.1/kg
iodized salt
free
free
NO
black gram
2 kg for Rs.5/kg
NO
Pulses
NO
Other features:
1.
covers the public distribution system, school meals, anganwadis (including take-home rations for pregnant/lactating women and
children under three
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It provides for not just food grain (what, rice etc) but also gram, iodized salt.
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Plus the food given to children (under mid-day meal) pregnant women and lactating mothers, will have additional nutritional
standards like calorie and protein value.
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Ration cards would be issued on the name of the eldest woman in a family. (Women empowerment)
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entitlements will be given on the basis of per household and not on per person.
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Going beyond the Centres definition of Antyodaya, the Chhattisgarh Government has declared as Antyodaya households= all
families of vulnerable social groups including tribal groups, widows or single women, terminally ill persons, physically challenged
persons, elderly-headed households with no assured means of subsistence and persons freed from bonded labour.
Computerisation of records and publication of all beneficiary and benefits given to them.
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Vigilance committees
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Anti
Pro
Government doesnt have enough incoming money (Revenue) to buy so much foodgrain and give it to poor people at cheaper
rate. Itd require approx Rs.2 lakh crores per year.
Consider it this way: one on side, Mohan wants to keep the minimum support price (MSP) high for the farmers. At the same time,
he also wants to sell cheap food grain, so from whose pocket will the difference come out? Obviously tax-payers.
But people cannot be taxed beyond a level. And Governments outgoing money (Expenditure) is already high thanks to fuel,
fertilizer subsidies and defense purchases.
One can look at the recent hike in petrol, LPG as a measure to reduce outgoing money, to make room for affording the Food
security Act (or similar other scheme.)
Government tried to increase the incoming money by disinvestment (that is selling Governments shares in PSUs) but investors
are not interested in buying shares at high price, hence money collection target is not achieved.
There is already disagreement between Planning Commission and various ministries over who should get how much subsidized
foodgrain.
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UPA wants the National Food security Act to have a Comprehensive coverage (=marketing-shockvalue during elections).
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For example Chhattisgarh Food security gives benefit to everyone except those who pay income tax/ property tax/ own big farmland= 90% public covered, only 10% people are not-eligible. So this is wide coverage.
Similarly States such as Tamilnadu already have provision for very cheap food grains.
So, if beneficiary coverage is small (e.g. only those earning less than Rs.3000/month are covered), then it wont create
the marketing shock value for elections.
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Hence wide-coverage necessary but to do such wide-coverage on a national-scale=>need truckload of cash, which central
Government doesnt have.
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And if Government tries to implement food security without increasing its incoming money (Revenue), itll lead to huge fiscal
deficit= other problems such as inflation, depreciation of rupee, decline in IIP etc. (more explained in earlier fiscal deficit article).
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So Mohan will have to nit-pick on who should get how much cheap foodgrain = new survey, new ID cards need to be
issued= lengthy and time consuming process, cannot be finished before 2014 Lok Sabha election.
Chhattisgarh is a small state, so not very difficult to administer such food security scheme.
But for a country large as India, Central Government doesnt have the infrastructure or manpower to implement Food security on
its own.
And doing this food security work via State Governments machinery = opens up room for all sort of corruption, leakages.
Therefore Mohan seems to have concluded that Food Security is an implausible idea in its present form. Better just to send
money directly to bank accounts of poor people, rather than relying on State Administrative machinery to run a full-fledged food
security Act.
Hence he recently announced Direct cash transfer prior to Gujarat, HP elections which basically hints that food security has
taken a backseat for Direct cash transfer scheme.
The (Punjab) state government is of the view that the centrally-sponsored schemes do not serve desired purpose and should be
abolished and the state should be given their earmarked allocation as un-tied grants. States are in a better position to leverage their
strengths and utilise the funds according to their development needs. (Statement of Punjab CM Prakash Singh Badal in NDC meeting.)
2.
12th Five Year plan document spoke of one more sham exercise in which the so-called centrally-sponsored schemes are to be
abolished with fund transfers to states. Undoubtedly, they would be reborn in another guise. (Tamilandu CM Jayalalitha @NDC
meeting)
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States have different priorities from the centre and should not be asked to partially fund central schemes. (Madhya Pradesh CM
Shivraj Singh Chauhan @NDC)
4.
12th Five Year plan document is just an approach to centralise the public resources with government of India in terms of deciding
priorities and nature of development schemes. Countrys resources should be allocated to the state and central plans
equally. (Karnataka Chief Minister Jagdish Shettar).
5.
An impression has been created that the government is all set to launch UID-enabled cash transfers on a mass scale before the
2014 elections. This is very misleading, and looks like an attempt to make people rush to UID enrollment centres. (Statement made by
Four members of the NAC including Aruna Roy + former NAC members Jean Dreze and MS Swaminathan)