Plan panel firms up food security law proposals

The Centre has firmed up proposal on setting up facilities for foodgrain storage and reforming the public distribution system (PDS) to plug leakages. This is mandated in the proposed national food security law cleared by a Cabinet committee.

Updated on: Jul 24, 2011, 23:12:51 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Centre has firmed up proposal on setting up facilities for foodgrain storage and reforming the public distribution system (PDS) to plug leakages. This is mandated in the proposed national food security law cleared by a Cabinet committee.

Finance minister Pranab Mukerjee, who heads the empowered group of ministers that approved the law, had asked Planning Commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia to finalise the two vital aspects to implement the law.

For setting up adequate decentralised storage, the plan panel has finalised a public-private partnership (PPP) proposal for setting up silos with capacity of 50,000 metric tonne foodgrain.

India faces a shortage of storing facility of about five mt of foodgrain depending on production. With India requiring food storing capacity of about 300 mt to meet the demand under the new law, storage facility is vital.

As per the plan, states will have to provide land to private partners to build storage facilities. A firms will get R6 per tonne every month as the rental for storage in first three years. "The prices will be revised as per inflation trends," an official said. The Food Corporation of India will bear the rental cost.

The panel has also said the land should be provided near railway tracks for ensuring easy transportation and private partners will have the liberty to utilise land as per their choice.

On introducing cash transfer of food subsidy, the panel has submitted a plan in which each below poverty line family will get a unique identification-linked smart card, which the holder will be able to get his monthly quota of ration.

As per the new model, the fair price shop owner will get foodgrain at the issue price plus transportation cost. “Instead of the fair price shop owner getting the subsidy, the poor consumer will get it resulting in no incentive to sell food grains in the open market,” a senior plan panel functionary said.

NFSA proposal

Coverage of 75% of rural and 50% of urban population

46% in rural and 28% in urban BPL families will get 35 kg of food grains every month at a rate of Rs3 for rice, Rs2 for wheat and Rs1 for coarse grains

The remaining will get 15 kg of food grains at a rate of 50% of the maximum support price for food grains.

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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