Effective Food Security

Yoginder K. Alagh : Wed Apr 27 2011,New Delhi:

The Food Security debate seemed almost closed with the PMEAC and the NAC both deciding on a coverage of around two thirds of the population. Some outliers like me accepted the need of wide coverage but argued both in the Express papers and the technical literature for a program targeted at the malnourished and were scared that a non targeted program could in fact lead to the really needy getting excluded as at present. Seeing that the outcome was decided I argued tongue in cheek in the group’s business paper for a cash subsidy program since it couldn’t be less effective than the present program. But the courts have opened very elegantly the discussion on targeting again and simultaneously a paper by Himanshu and Abhijit Sen has outlined the arguments we have been making in this column and the technical literature.

Shorn of the academic part the Himanshu-Sen paper argues for universal coverage so that the really needy are not excluded. We have in criticizing the relevance of the Official Poverty Line which incidentally originated in a Task Force we had chaired but which is no longer of relevance, also said that it should be substituted by a multi layered approach which captures the commitment to the definition of an aam admi. The State level practice of deprivation points was a step in this direction but needed validation by a central policy group which did not have the six minutes of dissent that a BPL Committee report on the subject contained.

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Entitlements to subsidies however would have to be more strictly decided. Himanshu and Sen suggest that a priority group identified on the basis of verifiable inclusion criteria will pay only Re.1 for kg of millets,Rs.2 per kg of wheat and Rs.3 per kg of rice for an entitlement of 7 kgs of grain which everyone will have. A second group using again exclusion criteria will get half that amount of grain i.e. three and half kg. The remaining will get grain at three quarters the MSP which means very few people would use that right. For the priority group this column has argued for coverage of the severely and chronically malnourished and pointed out the correlates of this group for identification. The chronically malnourished would be lower but the chronically and severely malnourished would be around 22% of the population. Sen and Himanshu say that the ‘priority group is likely to cover only about 20% of the population that is either disabled or destitute or identifiably deprived on multiple dimensions.’ We have been suggesting free food as for destitute, women headed households and the handicapped, pregnant and lactating mothers in such families and the girl child in deprived sections of society in school. The NAC has also correctly identified a similar group. A notional charge of the kind suggested by Himanshu and Sen would only be an identification characteristic.

Sen and Himanshu make the important point that the need to universalize the entitlements is not just to entitle families to cheap grain. They recognize that large number of families which may thus be entitled will not purchase and consume the grain they are entitled to. But this approach will solve the access issue. Restricting numbers they point out ‘reduces access and not the leakage ratio. It is more important to allow wide access, monitor actual PDS participation and allocate supplies accordingly.’ They are therefore in favor of a ‘self selection process.’ This is the point we have been emphasizing with monotonous regularity. The trouble with the Tendulkar poverty Line is not that it is new. We have been saying now for two decades that the Official Poverty Line developed by us in the Seventies should be junked. The Tendulkar Poverty Line by adopting the urban poverty line of the old poverty line as the national poverty line as the new line creates more problems than solving them. You cannot follow the Tendulkar Poverty Line as a cap for a score based ranking Sen and Himanshu tell us because it will be a variant of the existing system and that will excludes the really needy, a point the courts now emphasize.

Wider access, but limited entitlements and more severely limited subsidies aimed at the really needy are the answer and the debate is again open, we hope for a more effective solution to India’s real problem. (Indian Express)