Differences with NAC push Dreze to quit food panel

After giving his dissent note on the National Advisory Council's draft food security law, noted socio-economist Jean Dreze, a NAC member, has resigned from the working group entrusted with the job to suggest framework of the new food law to the government. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 7, 2011, 23:14:52 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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After giving his dissent note on the National Advisory Council's draft food security law, noted socio-economist Jean Dreze, a NAC member, has resigned from the working group entrusted with the job to suggest framework of the new food law to the government.

Dreze apparently wanted the proposed National Food Security law to cover all Indians, instead of 90 % people in rural India and 50% in urban India as suggested by NAC. But, the working group did not agree with his views, resulting in his resignation.

The NAC finalized a draft of National Food Security Bill in January 2011 and has sought public comments on it. Dreze had termed the NAC draft as a minimalist concept as it did not ensure nutritional security to all and instead, provided for limited expansion of the Public Distribution System (PDS).

The Right to Food Campaign, with whom Dreze has been associated, on Monday released its critique of the NAC draft and said it provides only five limited guarantees and does not ensure food security. The guarantees were a fragmented PDS, limited maternal and child benefits, provision of cooked food for vulnerable sections, ration cards in the name of women and portability of rations cards to migrant labour.

"The adolescent girls have been left out of the NAC draft," said Arun Gupta, national coordinator of Breastfeeding Network of India. The Supreme Court in 2006 asked the government to universalize the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to every child under the age of six, all pregnant women and lactating mothers and adolescent girls. "It is impossible to understand the grounds or logic which an already existing entitlement for a group of children has been omitted in the proposed NAC framework".

The group also said that the 3k kg of foodgrains per month for priority group and 20 kg for general households would meet the requirement of a family only for 10-15 days.

"The present proposals will provide for legal guarantees only for the distribution of cereals. There is no mention of other essential commodities such as pulses and edible oil as legal guarantees," a statement signed by 37 groups from across India, said.

While welcoming the NAC's recommendations on provision for community canteens, the campaign said removal of a guarantee of pensions to the old, single women, differently-abled from the framework of the entitlements is a major step backwards.

Hoping that the NAC will reconsider some of its decisions, the Right to Food Campaign asked for a government obligation to protect everyone from hunger and protection of small farmers through remunerative food pricing.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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