A new food security law, with as-yet unknown details, is supposed to empower the poor with a right to food. Supposedly, this will provide a statutory basis for a framework that assures food security for all: families below the poverty line (BPL) will be entitled to 25 kg of rice or wheat monthly, at Rs 3 per kg. Making food security a right is laudable. But the law, as structured today, leaves open the possibility of disastrous consequences for the poor, both consumers and producers of grain. The eagerness to get this done in the first 100 days is understandable. But a proposal with such far-reaching consequences must be debated adequately.

There are four important aspects of the law which could potentially harm the poor.

First, the existing public distribution system is still the channel for distribution. But the PDS is broken. Recent National Sample Survey data reveals that 70 per cent of the poor cannot access it at all. This is inevitable; creating a separate grain market for subsidised food offers alluring opportunities for black marketers. The greater the price difference, the more the incentive for leakage. Providing grain at Rs 3 will thus further increase leakage; and BPL beneficiaries might end up getting less than what they get at present.

Second, supplying cheaper wheat and rice through the PDS is unfair to producers of coarse, local cereals — jowar, bajra, ragi and such — which are in many parts of India grown by the poorest of the farmers. In Maharashtra, the home state of the Union agriculture and PDS minister, almost all grain farmers are also producers of jowar and bajra. In hilly tribal areas, local cereals are mostly finger millets. These coarse cereals are rain-fed crops; producers of these cereals work under harsh conditions, deprived of the benefits of electricity or fertiliser subsidies. (The lack of irrigation makes pumping redundant and fertiliser use minimal.) Supplying ever-cheaper wheat and rice through the PDS sucks demand away from these cereals, lowering their prices. (The fact that PDS grain is diverted to the open market does not change the effect.) Supplying grain at Rs 3 will further hurt these poor farmers.

... contd.