let Parliament take a call on this entitlement
Given the enormous opposition to the National Food Security Bill, 2013, the Union Cabinet had no option but to discard its plans to bring in this key piece of legislation through the ordinance route. And so it is that the top leadership of the Congress-led UPA regime on Thursday was compelled to agree that provisions of the Bill would first be discussed in Parliament — either at a special session or during the upcoming Monsoon Session — before being implemented. After all, the Bill is the foundation on which the Government will raise a nationwide social welfare programme to provide subsidised food to no less than 67 per cent of the population — about 800 million people — at a whopping annual cost of two lakh crore rupees. In other words, the National Food Security Bill is simply too big and too important, and of course too controversial, to be implemented without being discussed threadbare in Parliament.
Even members of the ruling alliance and those who support it from the outside, not to mention the Opposition, remain strongly opposed to the Bill in its present form. The Nationalist Congress Party, for instance, has consistently said that the Bill is poorly thought out — its lopsided focus on rice, wheat and millets will hurt the production of fruits, vegetables and pulses, and adversely affect natural cultivation patterns.
The Samajwadi Party has questioned how the Government arrived at the 67 per cent coverage figure and even threatened to withdraw its support to the regime if the Bill were to be implemented without parliamentary discussion. From the Opposition benches, the Bharatiya Janata Party remains against the Bill in its present form, even though it supports the basic principle of providing subsidised food grains to the poor; the left has demanded that the coverage be raised from 67 to 90 per cent. Meanwhile, the Government itself is unsure about how to calculate the beneficiaries of the scheme. Perhaps, it should learn a lesson or two from similar programmes already functioning successfully at the State-level in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh. In fact, the Congress-led regime must work to bring State Governments on board, since it is they who will be implementing the Centrally-sponsored scheme.
The Bill was the Congress's big electoral promise in 2009 but in the four years since then, it has failed take off. Now, with another general election around the corner, the scam-tainted party hopes that this Bill, coupled with other populist measures such as the Direct Cash Transfer scheme, will offset the strong anti-incumbency sentiment it faces. Hence, the tearing hurry to legislate it, even if it means having to sneak in the Bill through the backdoor. Remember how the UPA tried to quietly pass the Bill while Parliament was in an uproar during the Budget Session. But, given that the Bill is more than just another electoral gimmick, the ruling party must build consensus on the issue instead of blaming the Opposition for stalling a pro-poor legislation or seeking to establish its sole proprietorship over the proposal. Or else, the National Food Security Bill will also be a disaster like the Congress's other marquee scheme, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act.