FOOD SECURITY

Subverting the National Food Security Act:

greater exclusion and privatization

Persistent hunger and malnutrition

The International Food Policy Research Institute categorizes hunger in India as ‘alarming’. The latest NSS data shows continuing endemic and widespread hunger. There are also variations across expenditure groups, between the poorest and the least poor. There are inter-regional variations as well, and the most striking aspect is the widespread deprivation across states with States ruled by both BJP and Congress performing poorly.

Despite the government’s claims to the contrary, the average food consumption in terms of calories has come down from 2246 per capita per day in rural areas in 1972-73 to 2020 in 2009-10. The corresponding figures for urban areas are 2107 and 1946, respectively. Endemic hunger continues to afflict a large proportion of the Indian population.

Malnutrition is extremely high for all sections of the population, and especially pronounced for SC, ST and women. Children have relatively high levels of under-nutrition and poor health according to all three measures viz., height-for-age (stunting), weight-for-height (wasting) and weight-for-age (under-weight). The prevalence of under-weight in children is higher in India than in 40 other developing countries, worse than in Bangladesh and Nepal. The prevalence of under-weight in children in India (48 %) is about twice as high as the average for the 26 sub-Saharan African countries.

The Act          The National Food Security Act (NFSA) resulted from a people’s movement all over the country, when the level of consumption of food fell along with soaring prices of food. The Act aims to “to provide food and nutritional security… by ensuring access to adequate quantity of quality food at affordable prices to people.”

However, the major defect of the Act is that it is not universal for all Indians but continues to be deeply embedded in the notorious framework of targeting as was attempted for various other welfare Schemes. In other words, the Act seeks to supply essential food items only to specified beneficiaries who are supposed to be the “really needy” people. As explained later, this causes huge distortions not only in the Scheme but also in the availability of the food items being supplied.

The Act states that:

·         75% of the rural and 50% of the urban population would be covered at the all India level, and

·         entitlements would be 5kg per person per month (whereas ICMR guidelines state that an adult requires at least 14kgs per month).

The Act was brought into force in September 2013 during the end of the UPA-II Government’s tenure. NFSA of 2013 has been operational on paper for more than 36 months.

TRICKLE-DOWN OR HEALTH MELT DOWN?

Ø  Infant mortality rate is 48.9 and the under-five mortality rate is 59.2

Ø  Almost half of India’s children under age five years (48 percent) are chronically malnourished and are too short for their age or stunted

Ø  One out of every five children in India under age five years is wasted i.e. the child is too thin for his or her height..

Ø  Forty-three percent of children under age five years are underweight for their age.

Ø  Seven out of every 10 children age 6-59 months in India are anaemic.

Ø  Thirty-six percent of women and 34 percent of men are undernourished, with a BMI less than 18.5, indicating a high prevalence of nutritional deficiency.

Ø  Over half of women (55 percent) and almost one-quarter of men (24 percent) are anaemic.

NFSA only partially implemented               Even in the 11 states, viz. Bihar, Chandigarh, Chattisgarh, Delhi, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Punjab, where it began, its implementation is sluggish. Even after extending the deadline several times, the Government of India has failed to enforce the Act in 11 of the 36 states.

Many states are in fact implementing the Act only partially. Orissa covers only half the districts, while the Prime Minister’s own state Gujarat is amongst the last to come on board, as are other more populous states like Uttar Pradesh.

When the lawyer for Gujarat said that the implementation of the law was “under active consideration,” the Supreme Court Bench asked sharply: “Do you want to break away from the Union of India? Can a State say it cannot implement a law passed by Parliament? Are you saying you are not part of India? What is the Government of India doing about this?”

States with more universal Schemes are unwilling to implement the law for a totally different reason, namely they do not want to withdraw entitlements from those already covered. These include Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.  So the slow progress is not only bureaucratic tardiness, but also on account of the design of the Scheme and the attitude of the present government. 

Takes away more than it gives!                    To compound the problem of targeting, the erstwhile Planning Commission had decided on the state-wise distribution of the all India percentages by using the highly discredited poverty estimates. It decided that the total number of eligible households “shall not exceed the ceilings prescribed”. The allocation of subsidized food grains from the Central government was frozen till the 2021 Census, thus capping the number of beneficiaries for the next 10 years, so that their ratio in the growing population will fall, and the ranks of the food insecure will swell further.

In Kerala, 47.7% of the population is urban, but NFSA covers only 39.5%. Instead of the pre-existing universal Public Distribution System, only 46.37% of the population will now be covered under the NFSA.  Similarly, Tamil Nadu has been given an urban coverage of 37.7% and rural coverage of 62.55%, replacing the State government’s free scheme of 20 kgs of rice to every household.

Excludes many food-insecure people                      The Act’s implementation has been reduced just to evolving criteria to identify which households should be included and excluded from entitlements.  States have used different criteria for inclusion or exclusion of households in the “Priority” category who will get 5 kg. Maharashtra has just withdrawn entitlements to APL card holders, thus excluding 1.77 crore households; Karnataka has followed suit. Orissa has 8 criteria for automatic exclusion, including households with any member earning Rs.15,000 as income or pension in urban areas, and Rs.10,000 in rural areas.

Many states are using the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) data for selection. But, the SECC methodology is highly questionable and problematic since the deprivation criteria for household ranking are too narrow and exclude many of the poor and needy.

For example, although Adivasi households are amongst the most disadvantaged section of rural India, many possess (even if not by holding a title) a little bit of land, dry and often unproductive, and a mud house with at least two rooms, and are most likely to have an able-bodied male adult aged between 16 and 59 years in the family. As per the SECC deprivation criteria, they will NOT qualify for inclusion as “Priority” households for the NFSA.

Multiplicity of cards, leakages                      As a result, many different types of cards co-exist at the central level (‘Priority’, ‘BPL’, ‘APL’, ‘Antyodaya’, ‘Annapurna’ etc) and state level (Andhra Pradesh for weavers, or West Bengal for Left Wing Extremism {LWE} affected areas, etc.). Consequently, different households receive different quantities at different prices.

This array of entitlement naturally creates massive potential for corruption, theft and diversion. It is simple enough for any dishonest fair price shop owner to deny people their legitimate entitlements, and sell them on the black market at higher prices.  

Secondly, with this kind of exclusion, a genuine case can be included only by excluding another equally genuine household.  This is a devious policy of pitting the poor against the poor so that they do not unite against the obviously unfair strategy of using targeting in a scheme that is meant to ensure food security.

“Reforms” or burdening the poor?             The Government of India has made NFSA implementation conditional on the State governments undertaking “Reforms in the TPDS” (Targeted Public Distribution System). These include door-step delivery of foodgrains, end-to-end computerization, the use of Aadhaar for biometric identification of beneficiaries, and the introduction of schemes such as cash transfers, food coupons, etc. Towards this, a nine point action plan was implemented by state governments.

In contrast, the reforms really required are a good grievance redressal mechanism, and check on pilferage and corruption at all levels. The Food Security Allowance Rules of January 2015 have elaborated a food security allowance to be paid in cases of non-supply of food grains. Even as most field reports suggest that people are not getting their monthly entitlement of 5kg, there is not a single recorded payment of the food security allowance!

The government’s clear intention is to narrow the beneficiary base and their entitlements so as to save fiscal resources, and avoid actually providing foodgrains.

Financial “inclusion” or incentivizing touts?                      To appear pro-women, the NFSA states that the eldest adult woman of the household shall be the ration card holder. This has created a whole new layer of intermediaries to fill online forms, make several trips to officials, and increase monetary and physical burden. In cases of cash transfers field reports say that touts roam freely in bank branches in rural India, extorting 10 to 15 per cent as “service charges”. Sometimes, the touts simply keep the ATM cards and passwords with them for an entire village. The women ‘heads of household’ are going crazy in their attempt to do the paperwork. In Uttar Pradesh, all ration card holders are compulsorily required to register through an online form. The compulsory on-line system has given birth to several touts who charge anything between Rs.200-400 per form in Uttar Pradesh. A voter ID, an Aadhaar card and a mobile number are essential. Due to poor infrastructure, server failures often cause great hardship.

In other states, Aadhaar cards, electricity bills, land records, voter IDs are some of the documents that have been made compulsory to register for NFSA. In Andhra Pradesh, about 9 lakh ration cards were excluded during Aadhaar linkage. The state government also took the controversial decision to exclude those households with power consumption bills of more than Rs 500 from the NFSA.

An added prerequisite is a bank account, often requiring details of joint accounts in the name of both the husband and wife. The “Know Your Customer” (KYC) rules of most banks are similarly exclusionary. Accounts in local cooperative banks are not considered acceptable and there is an insistence on nationalized banks. Many Jan Dhan accounts have become inoperable due to no transactions.

Rather than making the PDS more accountable and transparent, computerization has resulted in the mushrooming of a new layer of touts, agents and middlemen who openly collude with corrupt officials. It is an open secret that a ‘BPL’ card can be bought for anything from Rs.500 to Rs.2000, clearly exposing the absence of transparency and potential for corruption in the selection process.

Inadequate measures for grievance redressal                    Important provisions like display of beneficiary lists at the FPS, involvement of Panchayat Raj institutions in delivery, giving FPS licenses to cooperatives and self help groups, strict action against those found involved in diversion and training of vigilance committees have been ignored. The detailed rules regarding the licensing and regulation of fair price shops, their timings, display of samples and information about stocks and prices, their inspection, setting up of a state level Food Commission, etc. are also neglected. The Vigilance Committees typically comprise members of the upper classes and castes, mostly from the ruling party and are paper entities. Worse, the grievance redressal mechanisms are only online, taking them out of reach of ordinary people.

FPS owners call the Shots                In rural areas, FPS owners are mostly upper caste landowners, and wield enormous power. Ironically, in many states the FPS owners are roped in to do the survey to identify beneficiaries, and they also do all the paperwork for the beneficiary households. They even keep the ration cards with them despite this being a banned practice. This results in massive diversion of foodgrains to a market with very high retail prices of cereals.

Forcing cash transfers                      The government is most keen to push cash transfers into the PDS. End-to-end computerization, biometrics and Aadhar, seeding with bank accounts, are the route to this, instead of providing full quotas of affordable and quality food grains. The PDS Control Order (March 2015), read with the Food Security (Assistance to State Governments) Rules and the Cash Transfer of Subsidy Rules issued in August 2015, all reveal the present Government strategy.  The August 2015 Supreme Court order permitting the use of Aadhar for PDS foodgrains, kerosene and LPG distribution has helped this process.

The Cash Transfer Rules allow food subsidy in cash (1.25 times the difference between the Minimum Support Price and the Central Issue Price) to be transferred directly to eligible households, subject to a digitized beneficiary data base, seeded with bank account and Aadhar details.  The scheme has started on a pilot basis in Chandigarh and Puducherry from September 2015. The government says it has digitized ration cards fully in 34 states, and that over 10 crore cards are seeded with Aadhar.

Fair Price Shop (FPS) dealers will be provided “point of sale devices”, which are “devices to be installed and operated in the FPS for identification of entitled persons and households based on Aadhaar or other authentication tools.” Already about 70,000 such ‘PoS’ devices have been installed, though many of them are reportedly malfunctioning. In Hyderabad, Telangana, the malfunctioning of biometric machines has caused great hardships to people who angrily damaged these machines and asked for a return to the old system. Biometric cards and machines stopped working on introduction in Sangli district of Maharashtra. In West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, biometric cards were issued in 100 Fair Price Shops. Of the total 73,000 cards issued, 10,241 cardholders were unable to procure the grain due to malfunction of the machines or faulty cards. This was projected as a “saving” of Rs.5 crores per month! The Government was pleased that West Godavari would save Rs107 crores and AP Rs.974 crores if biometric cards were introduced but all this was due to technological failure and deprivation of benefits.

The rationale of the “reforms” is thus pretty obvious – a rising exclusion from the PDS and its eventual conversion into a system of Cash Transfers. Within two years of the notification of the NFSA, there is a 45% decline in off-take, which substantiates the ground level reporting of non-availability of rations. Most of the rations have been diverted to the black market. It is no wonder that food subsidy as a proportion of GDP and the total Union Budget has remained around 1% and 7% respectively.

Unsurprisingly, targeting is causing greater food insecurity which can only be reversed by a universal Public Distribution System offering all essential commodities at affordable prices.

Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)                 The NFSA assures a free meal for all children from 6 months to 6 years through the local Anganwadi. As per existing norms, enunciated by the Supreme Court in a signpost judgment in 2006, an Anganwadi centre should serve a minimum of 300 and a maximum population of 1000. The SC also ordered the Government of India to sanction and operationalise a minimum of 14 lakh Anganwadi Centres in a phased manner by December 2008, prioritizing SC and ST habitations. This coverage has not yet been done. Yet the allocation for ICDS was cut by 33% over the previous year. Further, as per the latest Finance Commission proposals, the Central Government will pay only towards capital expenditure, leaving cash-strapped states with the burden of providing for the supplementary nutrition component. This is already taking its toll in several states, such as Bihar, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, where supplementary nutrition is not being supplied for several months.

Privatization of ICDS           The Government’s plan is to privatize the Anganwadi Centres and transfer them to large companies or NGOs. The World Bank has undertaken implementation of the ICDS in 162 high–malnutrition districts for a relatively small loan of Rs.583 crores through Public Private Participation, corporate adoption of Anganwadi centres, targeting of beneficiaries, privatization of the Supplementary Nutrition Programme, along with increased working hours for the workers and helpers without extra remuneration and their forcible retirement without any benefits.

The Government of India recently signed a memorandum with Cairn India Ltd, a subsidiary of the MNC Vedanta Group (notorious for its bauxite mining project in the Nayamgiri Hills in Odisha which was rejected by the local adivasis and refused environmental clearance by the Environment Ministry during the UPA government tenure) to develop and modernize 4000 ‘next gen’ Anganwadi Centres across the country. These Centres, to be renamed “Nand Ghar,” will run as Anganwadis during some part of the day, and as “women’s skill development centres” for the rest of the period. They will become sources of rural women’s cheap labour for the so called ‘Make in India’ programmeme. Even more dubious are the credentials of the company which is in deep trouble for tax evasion.

Already, ICDS worker’s unions have launched agitations against this Mission.

Take Home Ration (THR)                The NFSA states that 500 calories will be provided to children from 6 months to 6 years, with an additional 300 calories for those who are malnourished. Pregnant and lactating mothers are to be given 600 calories. This nutritional standard is to be met either by a hot, cooked nutritious meal or in the form of “Take Home Ration” (THR). The THR is essentially a solid ready-to-eat dosage of 10 minerals and vitamins in precise ratios, with proteins and carbohydrates, all provided in a packaged form. It is in fact a poor substitute for a hot cooked meal. However it has been pushed by the Ministry of Women and Child Development because it provides the entire multinational packaged food industry an opportunity to enter the rural markets and corner orders under the huge government programmeme. In spite of a Supreme Court ruling that the delivery of supplementary nutrition should not become a domain for contractors, several States have found ways to continue to give out contracts for THR worth crores of rupees. In Maharashtra for example, the programmeme has become a cause of enormous corruption with poor quality and irregular supply of the THR.

The biggest difficulty with the THR remains its unacceptability by the beneficiaries. As ICDS workers have frequently pointed out, the THR is not consumed by beneficiaries, resulting in a massive wastage of resources, leaving malnutrition levels high. Notwithstanding this, state governments continue with the THR.

According to a Report by Nutrition Right Coalition, Maharashtra, in Pune, Nandurbar and Gadchiroli districts of Maharashtra, 60% beneficiaries reported that they received only 2 packets, and 40% reported getting only 2 packets against a quota of 3 packets of THR per child per month. Moreover, only 11% children used the THR frequently. 79% of the non-users gave it to animals or used it for fishing, while another 11% actually threw it away.   

Complaining about the contents (Upma and Sattu) 69.4% said they tasted bitter, 22.4% felt the foods were too salty and 58% thought they emanated a bad odour. In comparison, among beneficiaries who were getting hot cooked food in two highly malnourishment-prone tahsils of Amravati district (Dharni and Chikhaldara), usage was higher at 88%. The main finding was that the average levels of protein and calories consumed in a serving per child was far lower in the THR (113 calories and 3.7 grammes of protein) compared to 253 calories and 9.2g of protein in hot cooked food. (Incidentally the nutritional norm is 800 calories and 20-25 g of protein as per the NFSA).

Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) also being privatized?               The Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) was initiated as an intervention to deal with child malnutrition and high school dropouts as well as social discrimination. After a Supreme Court order in 2001, it became a “Flagship Programmeme” of the Government of India and in 2008-9 was extended to the whole of the country. It currently covers about 8.24 crores of primary and 3.5 crores of upper primary school children from class 1 to 8 in around 12 lakh government and government-aided schools.

Several studies have recognized the accomplishment of the programmeme in terms of retention of poor children in school, improving their performance, and contributing to the total calorie intake of households. But they have also brought out cases of caste discrimination with children and workers from socially oppressed castes. Its main flaw has been its full reliance on local “cheap” labour particularly of women or their Self-Help Groups, and lack of proper infrastructure such as kitchen, storage space, utensils, cooking fuel, drinking water, etc. Poor quality of food grains supplied is also a huge difficulty faced in the implementation of the scheme.

The NFSA provides for a free, hot, cooked, mid-day meal for every child every day except on school holidays as per specified nutritional standards i.e. 450 cal and 12g protein for primary school children and 700 cal and 20 g of protein for upper primary children. It also says that every school will have facilities for cooking meals, drinking water and sanitation, with the proviso that schools in urban areas may utilize centralized kitchens. 

Now, the chief function of the centralized kitchen seems to be to be privatize the programmeme. The way centralized kitchens operate appears to damages its chief purpose, namely to provide a freshly cooked meal. Numerous experts have pointed out the loss of nutritional value of food prepared many hours in advance. There is also no accountability. The 2015 MDMS Rules astonishingly state that “no claim shall lie with the State Government or Centralized Kitchen for reasons of quality of food grains and meal!”

As with the ICDS, the budgetary allocation for the MDMS has been slashed by 42%, making further space for the corporate funded NGOs through Corporate Social Responsibility. Organizations such as Nandi and Akshay Patra receive the food grains and cooking costs from the government as per norms. As not-for–profit organizations, they also get tax concessions. In the name of the children they collect massive national and international donations. Organizations like Vedanta also deceitfully use the programmeme to gain the trust of the people in the forest areas they want to appropriate for mining. Global “UN–recognised” NGOs such as GAIN (Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition) are presently lobbying with the Central government to enter this apparently gainful scheme. GAIN is funded by amongst others, the Gates Foundation, USAID, the Governments of Canada and Netherlands, Irish Aid, UK Aid etc.  Its present Director is known to have served multinational food businesses such as Cadbury, Coca Cola, Britannia, etc. As per their website, it has made “strategic investments” in the Government of India’s Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and Mid-Day Meal programmemes to the tune of $ 15 million (Rs.100 crores approx.). As per reports, they have entered into projects in AP and Odisha to feed thousands of children with fortified food which has not been clinically tested and, according to nutritional experts, may even cause health problems in children.

Thus the experience of both the ICDS and MDMS programmes shows that the government wants to rapidly hand over these programmemes to the corporate sector. Provisions already made in the NFSA by the Congress led UPA-II government are being reinforced by the various Rules passed by present BJP Government, along with huge cuts in budget expenditure.

Maternity Benefit Programme                     The third and just as significant programme for nutrition security under the NFSA in its “life cycle” approach is the Maternity Benefit programme. Every pregnant woman and lactating mother (with the exception of those who are government employees or benefit from any other maternity benefit programme) shall get a maternity benefit of not less than Rs.6,000. However, the details of the programme have not been spelt out in the Act, and the Government of India is yet to notify specific Rules regarding Maternity Benefit entitlements under the NFSA. However, pregnant and lactating mothers are also entitled to a free meal during pregnancy and six months after child birth through the ICDS programme as per nutritional standards specified under the Act. This aspect is already being implemented, but the cash transfer is yet to materialize.

The cash transfer for maternity benefits will be of immense value especially to women working in the unorganized sector, and all those who are not covered by the Maternity Benefit Act of 1961.  High levels of anaemia, hard manual labour till the last few days of pregnancy, lack of institutional deliveries and a return to work without adequate rest are some of the problems faced by working women in the country. This leads to unacceptably high levels of maternal mortality, and creates obstacles in the achievement of exclusive breast feeding for the first six months. This in turn leads to infant mortality and malnourishment in children, setting off a vicious cycle of malnourishment and child mortality. A universal cash transfer in this critical period will allow women some rest and better nutrition, help to reduce maternal morbidity and mortality and promote breastfeeding.

Under the National Maternity Benefit Scheme (NMBS) which started in 1995, pregnant women only from BPL households were given Rs.500 before delivery with the intention of meeting the cost of the delivery. Later in 2010, the Government of India launched the Indira Gandhi Matritva Sahyog Yojana, in 53 districts of the country. This is a scheme to transfer a total of Rs.6000 in three installments, each installment depending on the fulfillment of certain conditions which include registration with the local Anganwadi or health centre, registration of birth of the child, its immunization schedule, exclusive breastfeeding and attending counseling sessions. However a recent study concludes that the scheme requires to be re-designed to meet the basic objectives of a maternity benefit programme.

Since there has been no additional budgetary allocation for the programme in successive Union Budgets after the NFSA was legislated, it appears that the government is in no hurry to universalize the programme as per the mandate of the Act.

Conclusions                The National Food Security Act is an important step but suffers from the inherent weakness of targeting its benefits to a select section of the people. Given the poor nutritional status of the majority of the Indian people, and particularly the poor, women and children, which has been well documented in different international and national reports and studies, it is necessary to have nutrition programmes that will reach out to the largest majority of them. The targeting approach ends up excluding those very sections who need to access them. There is therefore a pressing need to universalize these programmes and provide the necessary financial and administrative support.

However, the present Central government is not only intensifying the targeting, it is also going a step further and moving towards a system of cash transfers and privatization and corporatization of all the food security and nutrition programmes in the country. At a time when the prices of essential commodities are rising relentlessly, such policies will further imperil the nutrition security of the vast majority of the Indian people.

Entitlements under the National Food Security Act, 2013

Entitlement	Target group	Entitlement	Price	Coverage
Food grain	Household	Priority household- 5kg wheat or/and rice per person per month	Rice @Rs. 3/kg & Wheat @Rs. 2/kg	Rural Areas- 75% & Urban Areas- 50%14
		AAY households- 35 kg per household per month
	Pregnant and lactating women during pregnancy and six months after child birth	Take home ration 600 kcal and 18-20gms of protein 500 kcal and 12-15 gms of protein 800 kcal and 20-25gms of protein	Free	Universal
	Children between 6 months-3 years
	Malnourished children between 6 months–6 years
	Children between 3-6 years	Morning snack and hot cooked meal at Anganwadi 500kcal and 12-15gms of protein
	Children between 6-14 years Lower primary Upper Primary	One hot cooked meal at school 450 kcal and 12 gms of protein 700kcal and 20 gms of protein
Cash Transfer	Every pregnant and lactating woman	Not less than Rs. 6000		Universal