While the National Food Security Act (NFSA) encompasses the right to choose the food grains, people of Odisha are not allowed such benefit as the Union Government is providing more wheat than rice. So the State Government has once again urged the Centre to provide required amount of rice to be allocated to the NFSA beneficiaries.
Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi on Monday wrote to the Food and Public Distribution Secretary Vrinda Sarup in this regard, while urging her to allocate additional quantity of 85, 963 Metric Ton of rice and taking back the allocation of 66,343 MT of wheat for Odisha.
As the Union Government is harping on implementation of NFSA in the State, the State Government is sincerely implementing the same. The NFSA creates right to food for each beneficiary. Under this right, an individual of priority household is entitled to five kg of food grains.
The Right to Food encompasses the right to choose the food grains. Odisha has followed this dictum and collected choice of each beneficiary with respect of food grain. Same has also been reflected on the body of the ration card.
Justifying for allocating more rice to Odisha, Chief Secretary Padhi said the State has 24 per cent of tribal population, who prefer rice as their staple food. For them getting wheat milled to flour and then preparing roties is an alien activity as they are not accustomed to the same.
Under NFSA, most of the poor tribal families have opted for 100 per cent rice against monthly entitlement. Now if we impose wheat on their entitlement, there is every possibility that the poor beneficiaries will refuse to take it and it is likely to impact their food security, pointed out Padhi.
Secondly, there are very few wheat mills in rural areas and people cannot mill the whole wheat received from PDS outlets. This is also another reason for reluctance of NFSA beneficiaries to opt for wheat.
It may be noted that wheat was being distributed only to APl families in the pre-NFSA regime. These APl families are better off and often had wheat flour in their daily dietary combination. Many of them were from middle class families who had access to flour mills and could mill the wheat and use it.
It is a fact that Odisha was lifting only about 80 per cent of wheat allocation of 12.41 lakh MT out of 15.45 lakh MT from April, 2012 to October, 2015 as there was less demand.
It is learnt that the State’s allocation of total food grains under NFSA was fixed by the Union Government after taking average lifting figure of last three years under normal scheme. But the actual lifting figures of wheat and rice in last three years have not been taken into account by the Government of India, while fixing the ratio of rice to wheat for Odisha. In fact our consumption was around 85 per cent rice and 15 per cent what under TPDS in the pre-NFSA regime. Similarly the choice of NFSA beneficiaries has been reflected as rice to wheat in proportion of 85.82:14.18.
Therefore allocation of rice and wheat is to be made at 85.82: 14.18, said Padhi in his letter.