In science, Big Bang is now preferred to Steady State. However, in policy-making, since we don’t like big bangs, we continue to have an unsteady state. The Congress party’s electoral manifesto promised a right to food law, especially for “most vulnerable sections of society”. Every BPL (below the poverty line) family will be entitled to 25 kg of rice/ wheat a month at Rs 3 per kg. The July 6 Union Budget promised a draft food security bill for “public debate and consultations”. Unlike 2004, when NREGA and RTI were pushed through in virtually 100-day timelines, there is reticence on the right to food security. That is because there is a ditch of subsidy-targeting ahead. When one tries to jump a ditch, one cannot approach it in steady state fashion, jumping 20 per cent of it incrementally and saving the rest for later. There has to be a big bang jump. Else, one sprawls in the muck at the bottom. Notwithstanding pronouncements to the contrary, the UPA does not want subsidies targeted. The poor need subsidies. The rich do not. The present system has a double problem — inclusion of the rich and exclusion of the poor. However, the moment one pins down vulnerable sections or BPL, excluded non-poor are no longer a support base.

Depending on the recall method used, the poverty ratio in 2004-05 was 21.8 per cent or 27.5 per cent. For all one knows, the figure may

be lower today. But how can one accept such low poverty figures? In IFPRI’s (International Food Policy Research Institute) Global Hunger Index for 2008, India performs worse than many sub-Saharan African and South Asian countries. The National Family Health Survey (2005-06) gives a malnutrition (lower than average weight used as proxy) figure of 45.9 per cent among children. Using the same 2004-05 data, didn’t the Unorganised Sector Commission tell us 77 per cent of India’s population is vulnerable? That’s one of the beauties of using poverty lines. By raising the bar of the poverty line, whatever percentage of population one wishes can be shown to be poor. And 50 per cent of India’s population must be poor. That’s what averages are about. Fifty per cent of the population is below the mean per capita income (or expenditure) and they must be poor. (Strictly speaking, median rather than mean.) It’s odd how this 50 per cent exogenously imposed poverty figure characterises our public discourse, such as in reservations too. Or in the rural development ministry’s attempts to first fix 50 per cent and then justify it through calorie norms. It’s a separate matter that lifestyle changes, even among the poor, have made those calorie norms of the early-’60s outdated. But even if we agree 50 per cent is BPL, we won’t agree the remaining 50 per cent is APL (above the poverty line) and undeserving of subsidies.

... contd.