New figure for poor: 372 million

As many as 372 million Indians will be categorised as poor in the proposed National Food Security Act, the Planning Commission said on Saturday. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 20, 2010, 19:53:09 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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As many as 372 million Indians will be categorised as poor in the proposed National Food Security Act, the Planning Commission said on Saturday.

It would mean that additional 97 million people would get subsidised food grains, once the proposed law is implemented, increasing the government’s food subsidy bill by around Rs 20,000 crore, to Rs 75,000 crore.

The proposed law guarantees 25 kg of food grains only to below poverty line families. As of now, 275 million poor Indians get up to 35 kg in subsidised food grains from the government-run fair price shops.

The new poverty estimate — based on access to food, education and health — will not change the urban poverty figure but for rural India, the number of poor would increase from 28.3 per cent to 41.8 per cent.

"It shows government wants to see overall development of rural India,” said a plan panel member, after the commission accepted the Suresh Tendulkar Committee report on poverty estimation. “Ensuring all poor get their share of the subsidised food will remain a challenge.”

The Right to Food campaign rejected the decision, saying “entitlement to food should not be linked with poverty estimation”. “We insist access to food should be universal,” said campaigner Anuradha Talwar.

The panel is expected to inform the empowered Group of Ministers (eGOM) on the proposed law about its decision this week. Earlier, the eGoM had approved a food security law based on existing poverty estimation but had to review its decision after intervention by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. It then asked the panel to finalise the poverty estimate.

“We expect the report to be ready by end of 2011,” Pranob Sen, Chief Statistician of India told Hindustan Times.

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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