By Ruma Dubey

Yesterday, late into the evening, the Union Cabinet approved the food security ordinance and now it will go to President Pranab Mukherjee and will be promulgated after his approval.

The Opposition has been asking the question, “ What is the emergency that the Govt needed to got for an ordinance for the Food Security Bill?” Well, the emergency is the election in 2014 and with the memory of people more mired in corruption charges and scandals, the UPA’s emergency is to get this Bill passed before elections so that it can come riding on the white horse, as the savior of the poor in India. 

We all always knew that the Food Security Bill was the UPA’s trump card and it has been struggling hard to get this passed for the past four sessions and the Opposition has time and again disrupted the workings of the Parliament, not allowing, not just the Food Security Bill to get through but the others also.  So what does this Ordinance mean? Does this mean that UPA has the authority to make this Bill into an Act without the Oppositions support?  

As per our Constitution, an Ordinance promulgated under this article shall have the same force and effect as an Act of Parliament, but every such Ordinance

(a) shall be laid before both House of Parliament and shall cease to operate at the expiration of six weeks from the reassemble of Parliament, or, if before the expiration of that period resolutions disapproving it are passed by both Houses, upon the passing of the second of those resolutions; and

(b) may be withdrawn at any time by the President Explanation Where the Houses of Parliament are summoned to reassemble on different dates, the period of six weeks shall be reckoned from the later of those dates for the purposes of this clause.

In simple layman language what this means is that despite an Ordinance, the Bill will need to be approved by both the Houses – Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha, within six months for the Bill to become an Act.  So this Ordinance does not mean automatic approval but it assures the Govt that the Bill now have to be necessarily dealt with, even if it means a special session  of the Parliament and that too within six months.

This is one of the most ambitious projects of the UPA and is expected to cost the nation only around Rs.1.3 lakh crore. We are as such dealing with a burgeoning  fiscal deficit; we are grappling with oil and fertilizer subsidies and now the Food subsidy too.

The bill aims to provide subsidised food grain to around 800 million people; they will have the right to 5 kg of foodgrain every month at highly subsidised rates of Rs.1-3 per kg. This is like giving a right to food to every poor of India, where 5 kgs of rice will be given at Rs.3/kg, Rs.2/kg for wheat and Re.1/kg for coarse cereals.

This is indeed a very noble deed and Tamil Nadu already has a similar scheme in place – a very efficient comprehensive model in the form of universal public distribution system. Another very successful Food security bill is in place at Chhattisgarh wherein priority households get monthly public distribution system (PDS) entitlement of 35 kg rice, wheat flour, pulses, gram and iodised salt at subsidised prices. Gujarat says that it has been having a food security bill for the past 10 years wherein the poor people in Gujarat were being provided wheat at the rate of Rs 2 per kg, rice at Rs 3 per kg through the PDS.

So why the need to have a national food security bill? Why can’t states have their own set food bill like these three states? And what happens to these states which already have their own system in place?  The big question remains – how and who is going to pay for this ambitious project?

Yes, we need to take care of those who are less fortunate but is this the right way? Our PDS is notoriously corrupt and inefficient. So using the same network for this Bill makes no sense. Thus there are  a lot of things which need to be ironed out before it see the light of the day. Wish the Govt showed this “emergency” for other Bills too and got projects off the ground.

Give a man a fish you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. That is where the Govt needs to focus – education and employment and not making beggars of already those on the lowest rung of the economic ladder.