People's Democracy

I THINK, it is very important to bring back on to our political agendas the issues of the poor. And to that extent, the issue of food security, the various dimensions of the issue of food security, the direction of the government policies on the issue of food security –– all these have a very wide impact on the largest number of our people. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations has defined food security "as the economic and physical access for the largest number of people, for all people, at all times to have enough food to lead a healthy life". And from this angle, we have to see, how far our Public Distribution System, and how far the different dimensions of our food security policies ally themselves or align themselves to this international standard. There are very important components of the Public Distribution System, which I would just like to mention. One is the whole issue of production of foodgrains and the procurement of foodgrains. I think, the entire House will agree that one of the achievements of independent India is that we have now become self-sufficient in foodgrains production. In those days of the fifties, we had to depend on the United States of America for PL-480 and all the tensions and conditions were there. We are out of that trap. It is a tribute to our farmers, first and the foremost.

But having said that we have achieved this, there is a disturbing trend, which has also been noted in the mid-term plan appraisal, of the poor performance of the agricultural sector and the slow down in the growth rate of cereal production. And although there may be many factors, including natural calamities, this is cause of concern. The thrust of the government for export-oriented strategies, the thrust of the government in the name of diversification has led to a shift from foodgrains production to cash crop production. We are not against diversification. Today, even West Bengal has the highest number of potato producers in India and it is also exporting flowers to European Union. But the basic bricks of food security depend on protecting the required amount for cereal production and that level has to be maintained. That is one point that I would like to flag.

Secondly, linked with this, is the procurement policy and, I think, this entire House is committed to protect the rights of the peasantry against the vagaries of the market as far as procurement is concerned. But what is disturbing is that in December 2004, the finance ministry has come out with a white paper for discussion analysing the subsidies, including food subsidies, in which they have floated an idea to end open-ended procurement. What they are suggesting is that FCI should suspend purchase operations once targets are achieved, the FCI should have the flexibility of adding to these targets quantities in specific markets only in case overall procurement falls short of the target in other markets. We strongly oppose it. We have to reaffirm through this debate that we are committed to procurement, we are committed to minimum support price. In fact, what we would like is to extend minimum support price to other foodgrains also, including coarse grains, which is the staple diet of the poor in many states.

The other aspect is transport and storage. I am not going into the details except saying that we know that there are many problems with the FCI, there are questions of leakages, corruption; but in a country where some states are food deficit, some states are food surplus, in such a situation, the issue of storage and transportation, along with the issue of price stabilisation is very crucial to ensure food security to remote areas of our country. Therefore, the necessity to strengthen the FCI operations in this country and appreciate the role of the FCI, while reforming whatever leakages there may be, is another very important component of food security.

The issue of Public Distribution System, we need to put it in the real context of the increasing hunger of our people. I hope, there are not going to be differences in this House on actually assessing the extent of hunger, because we have seen certain statements and certain articles written by some members of parliament in which they have argued that in fact, in India, hunger is decreasing. How do you measure hunger? You can measure it through calories intake. If you measure through calorie intake, then all the statistics show that there is a decrease in calorie intake. In other words, more Indians are eating less than they were, say, 20 to 25 years ago. In fact, there are some assessments to say that we are back to the time of famine in the 40’s as far as per capita food availability is concerned. Another way to look at it is, to look at nutrition figures, from the assessment of National Nutrition Board. It is shocking that 50 per cent of our children are malnourished. About 50 per cent of all our adults are under-nourished or malnourished. A large number of women, about 75 per cent, I think, if you just look at our rural women, I would say 70-75 per cent of our women suffer from differing degrees of anaemia. This is not something genetic or biological; this is simply because they are not getting enough to eat. And because of female malnourishment, if you even look at the birth weight of our babies, it is so shocking that in India, 25-30 per cent of our newborn babies are underweight, compared with other countries –– in China it is 6 per cent, in Malaysia it is 7 per cent, and even in Sri Lanka it is 7 per cent.

I speak here on the basis of the various campaigns run by my Party, CPI(M), on the issue of food and food security. You will be shocked to hear about the different linkages between food insecurity and other aspects of the lives of the people, particularly women. In a patriarchal society, it is a fact that where there is less food in a house, where there is more poverty in households, where there is growing unemployment, then the main burden of it is taken by women. Our women’s organisation, the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has done surveys in about 14 to 15 states at the grassroots level, from village to village and there is a cascading negative impact on women of food insecurity. For example, because of food insecurity, a woman today where she has no guaranteed work is accepting any type of work for wages far below the minimum wages. So, labour reform, in fact, is already there is rural India because the worker herself drawn by her own need for food to feed her family, is accepting work on worse terms. Indebtedness has also increased.

The second thing, because she is eating less as I have already mentioned her health is impacted. And the third, and this is an invisible cost, when economic vulnerability increases and particularly when the core which is food vulnerability and food insecurity increases the degree of abuse, whether it is sexual abuse, whether it is abuse of human dignity, whether it is the language that our poor rural women have to face, whether it is her dependence on contractors, on supervisors, on shopkeepers whom she is indebted to; all these factors lead to an increase in violence against women. This is the reality for an increasing number of poor women. This is happening, at a time where there is growing unemployment, there is growing joblessness, in that situation unless we can guarantee the minimum human right of food, we can never protect the citizenship rights of our people.

UTTER FAILURE OF TARGETING SYSTEM

It is in this context of increased hunger that what is most distressing at present is the state of the Public Distribution System. Recently in June, members have read it, the Planning Commission has made an evaluation of the Public Distribution System an absolutely devastating critique, more so, in the context of the glaringly increasing rural distress. I do not discount the issues that have been raised in the evaluation. That evaluation says that today 57 per cent of the poor are outside the BPL category, they do not have BPL cards. It says that over half of the BPL foodgrains meant for the poor are not reaching the poor. It says that there are huge leakages and corruption, even in the issuing of ration cards and our own experience substantiates that. And along with that the subsidy actually for the poor they are saying it is even less than one-third. So, if this is the state of Public Distribution System at a time when hunger is increasing in India, then we have to ask ourselves what is the reason for it. We have got sufficient food production, we have got a good system of transport and storage and yet people who need the foodgrains for sheer survival do not have access to it. What is the reason? Till 1997, we had what is called a Universal Public Distribution, that is, everyone had equal access at the same price to the foodgrains available in the ration shops, whatever the quota was. In 1997, under the leadership of our present finance minister a new planning was done on the basis of this understanding that actually the rationing system is not reaching those for whom it is meant, so, let us have a more targeted system of public distribution, so that we can focus on the poor and convey and ensure that this supply of foodgrains reaches those for whom it is meant . But from 1997 to 2005 what is actually the result of the targeting system? It is essential for us to review this whole policy of targeting. And this is what I want to stress today in this debate because I believe that this targeting system, the ideology for targeting, is driven not by the interests of the people of India, it is driven by the WTO, the World Bank and other international institutions who have been saying, that subsidies for the poor and the subsidies for food have to be cut.

The fact is that this system of targeting has utterly failed. This is not something which we are saying from the Left. This has been said by a committee, set up by the former NDA government, headed by an eminent economist, Abhijit Sen. It says, "Data on quantities allocated and quantities purchased by commodities, after the introduction of the Targeted Public Distribution System, show that the main factor in the decline in offtake is a total collapse in demand from the APL consumers. The policy of equating issue prices with economic cost does have a deciding effect of excluding APL consumers from the PDS." Then, it gave figures where 76.7 per cent of allocation was lifted in 1998-99 and it fell down to 30 per cent and then came down to just 3.8 per cent in 2000-01. And, there is a similar pattern as far as rice is concerned,. Even the BPL offtake has come down, that is what the committee says, not because people do not request the grain. This report says that this is because of lack of physical access as also the way the ration shops function. One point here is: the system, of targeting in which we divided the population into APL and BPL and further into Antyodaya there are three different cards for one Ration Shop, differentiation in prices, differentiation in population has utterly failed even according to all government reports.

One of the most criminal things that has happened is the destruction of the most valuable social sector infrastructure. India could boast in 80s and 90s of having one of the best distribution systems in the world. We had a network of about 5 lakh fair price shops. What has it actually meant? Whatever we may say about the ration shop owners -- we can say that some of them are corrupt, they are responsible for leakages, they are selling in black-market, etc., I agree with everything. That is correct. But, at the same time, because of this policy of targeting, we have virtually destroyed the PDS, starting with the fair price shops. It is not economically viable to run them. I will give you an example of Kerala. There was 96 per cent of coverage in Kerala. It was the highest in the country. What has happened in the last seven to eight years? It has been destroyed. According to a recent study which has been carried out. One ration shop in Kerala used to sell on an average 7,000 kg of rice a month. Today it has come down to 2,000 kg. One ration shop in Kerala used to sell about 2,500 kg of wheat. Today, it has come down to 200 kg. What is the net result? 5,000 ration shops in Kerala have been closed down. If this is the system in Kerala where fair price shops/ration shops are closing down, what is going to be the situation in other states where, in any case it was started at much lower profile and therefore have a much weaker system. There it is in a state of utter collapse. Therefore, one aspect of targeting is the destruction of the most crucial social sector infrastructure in this country which, I think, is dong a great injustice not only to the present generation, but also to the future generations who will require food security more and more in the current economic world situation. Whom is the targeted system meant for? The poor. But, as I have earlier quoted, the Planning Commission itself has said that 57 per cent of the poor are left out from the BPL category.

It is raised again and again what are the poverty line estimates; how are these estimates done; who is considered poor in this country? And, in a situation where universal rights are being privatised, where to have a BPL card today, is, at least, one aspect of sheer survival. Just for survival, for the right to live today, you need a BPL card. If you don’t have it, you can’t even go to a government hospital for proper treatment. You have to pay huge sums. So, where the BPL cards mean so much to the poor, how do we measure poverty? I had raised a parliamentary question. Unfortunately it did not come up for oral answer, but I have got a written answer to that. The answer says that the present concept of poverty line is based on the per capita consumption expenditure needed to attain a minimum amount of non-food expenditure. And, this calculation is done on the basis of the Lakdawala Committee. On the basis of that they use the figures and they extrapolate from that, and thus, the poverty estimates are made, and given to each state. Now, what is the income of the poverty estimate? Food and non-food -- Rs.327 per month, that is Rs 11 per day. Is it a poverty line? Is it a destitution line? Is it a starvation line? And, if this is the way in which we are going to define the poor in this country, is it not the most cruel method of statistically trying to invisiblise a reality? Our statistics are made for manipulation. So many economists have questioned this poverty line estimate. I asked the Planning Commission. The Planning Commission has given me this answer. In which it says, "No, there is no need to set up any committee; we are not setting up any committee". So, the first thing that I want to raise is this. Please set up a committee with economists who are aware of the Indian realities, and not the realities only in Hong Kong. And, to understand those realities, please let them have new methodologies of assessing poverty. That is one point. This income line, I say, this poverty line is a line for destitution. Now, if you take this as a poverty line, then, who is APL? Even if one earns 500 rupees per month, you are not poor and you belong to APL.

At the same time state governments also conduct BPL surveys with help from the rural development ministry. Most often the Planning Commission and the state governments have different assessments. There were two rounds of state government BPL census in 1992 and 1997. Based on income expenditure approach, both became subject to criticism because of the exclusion criteria. So, what does this mean? One, you have the central quotas; two, you have state assessments, which, in any case, are very wrong. According to what the rural development ministry has answered me, the method itself is wrong.

But, suppose, in my state, my survey shows that I have 44 per cent under the BPL and the centre tells me, ‘No, according to Lakhdawala Committee assessments and our extrapolations, you have only 30 per cent, what will happen to that 14 per cent whom I have identified? So, I have to cut them out of the BPL list. So, What I am forced to do is go into this areas where I am dividing the poor arbitrarily. Then, is this not going to lead to corruption? So, this gap in poverty assessments, according to us and our experience, is something which requires urgent reform in favour of the poor.

The third point I want to make is this. Suppose the best BPL criterion is kept. Even then, for benefits to food security, why use this poverty criteria? Because, after all, in our country, the largest section of people do not have a fixed income. They have fluctuating incomes, particularly the unorganised sector workers and peasants. We have seen it. You go to the National Food-for-Work Programme site. I have been to 80 sites in five states. Who are the people there? Many of them are people who have got land. But the land is not giving the required income, in fact, it is the reverse; the land has got them into debt. They are going to the Food for work Programme to work as manual labour from morning till night but they are not identified as poor. So, when incomes are fluctuating, when the unorganised sector is growing, when the workers in the organised sector, because of new liberal reforms, are being pushed out of guaranteed benefits, which are the hall mark of any civilised society, we are taking our people out of that net, then, at least, for this basic right to food, let us not have this methodology. There is a drought. Unless I get drought relief, it will push me into poverty. But I will not get a BPL card. And, there have been recurring droughts or floods in many parts of the country. In the last 58 years, for 55 years there have been recurring floods in Assam, year-after-year. But find out from Assam, have those people got BPL cards? No, they have not got them. But they are in poverty. They are in sheer distress. But, because of these assessments of poverty, they do not have cards. Because of the nature of work of majority of the Indian population, we cannot, according to me, link a right to food, a basic human right, to this kind of identification.

The top 25-30 per cent of our population have never gone to a ration shop. There is a process of self-exclusion, but the cost that you pay for errors of inclusion is much, much less than the cost you pay for the errors of exclusion. And, it is errors of exclusion today which mark the way the Public Distribution System is working. We have to consider whether at all we use these lines and figures of BPL assessment which is there.

What about subsidies? Now, if you look at the issue of subsidies, as we have already seen, anyway, the consumer is getting one-third. And, if you look at why subsidies went up so high in the last four years, it is a lesson to be learnt. And, I am sure, my friends in the NDA have understood that lesson, and learnt that lesson, which all of us have to learn, including those who are sitting in the UPA government today. If they do not learn those lessons, where will they be going? What is the lesson? What happened? Because of this obsession of targeting, and the commitment to a targeted system, you had a situation where you had six crore tonnes of foodgrains rotting in the godowns but we had people starving. Ultimately, so much money was spent –– out of Rs 25,000 crore, about Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 crore was spent just to stock the grain. So, what did they do? They exported. About 15-20 million tonnes of grains was exported. At what price, it was exported at the BPL price. Why could you not give the same grain to the poor, instead of giving Rs 7,000 to 8,000 crore to big traders as subsidy? If we had given the same subsidy to poor, would we not have saved so many lives, would we not have saved so many children from malnutrition and undernourishment? So, that is a lesson, and that lesson has been very clearly stated in the Economic Survey of 2004-05. It says, "carrying cost of foodgrains accounted for almost 20-25 per cent of food subsidy during 2001-02 and 2002-03. The decline in food stocks during 2003-04 and 2004-05 with implications for reduction in the carrying cost and the gradual decline in the disposal of subsidised foodgrains have resulted in a considerable deceleration in the growth of food subsidy during 2003-04". In fact, it is to the tune of about Rs 7,000 to Rs 8,000 crore. We are down to Rs 15,000 to 16,000 crores. But, in the name of subsidies what is given. It is Rs 7.20 for a kilo of rice and around Rs 5.70 for a kilo of wheat. If you take all this together, at present, it is below one percent of the entire GDP of this country. But what is the government thinking? I have read only the documents of the finance ministry. What they have said in the budget speech and what they are planning. Instead of understanding the lesson in terms of extent of hunger and needs of our people what they are saying is "Scrap the PDS as it is full of loopholes and instead take food stamps".

What is the international experience of food stamps? We have seen that food stamps have not worked in even a single developing country. Firstly, because in the context of inflation, naturally, the value of food stamps will go down. Secondly, in a country like India where there are so many remote areas, where is the shop which is going to sell the grain? How will there be any protection against that shopkeeper and trader from exploiting the poor person with the food coupon? It cannot work in India. And, it is going to lead to further disaster. So, my humble submission is that in the course of this debate I hope that this House can come to an unanimous understanding of the needs, the first and foremost, of our own people, not the conditions which are imposed on us, not the dictates which are given to us by those who do not even know the very meaning of hunger. And, in that, what we are suggesting is this. If you look at the food subsidy, you will find that out of Rs 25,000 crore, they are saving Rs 8,000 crores this year. Give that subsidy. Don’t cut it down, but shift it to the poor. We have made a rough calculation that if you take 70 per cent of households in India – all households, APL, BPL everybody, it will come to around – a very rough calculation – Rs 27,000 crore. That is still one per cent of GDP. I feel that we are investing this expenditure in the future of this country, in the health of our people. And nothing can compare to the need for this. Therefore, in conclusion, all I would say is that I hope the government will come out with a clear policy direction to strengthen the PDS, to make it universal at BPL prices and to give up this disastrous path of privatising the rights of the people of this country.