National Food Security Act
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: June 02 , 2014 -

National Food Security Act was passed by the Parliament last year at the initiative of UPA Government led by Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh.

The Act is a bold and ambitious one in the sense that it aims to provide food grains to the country’s teeming millions of poor at highly subsidized rates.

The Act per se is magnanimous and highly commendable. Priority households are entitled to 5 Kgs of food grains per person per month, and Antyodaya households to 35 kgs per household per month.

The combined coverage of Priority and Antyodaya households or the total eligible households shall extend up to 75 per cent of the rural population and up to 50 per cent of the urban population as calculated by many analysts and economists.

NFSA has a provision of an age-appropriate meal, free of charge, through the local Anganwadi for children in the age group of 6 months to 6 years.

For children aged 6-14 years, it guarantees one free mid-day meal every day (except on school holidays) in all government and government-aided schools, up to Class VIII.

For children who suffer from malnutrition, meals will be provided to them free of charge through the local Anganwadi.

The Act entitles every pregnant and lactating mother to a free meal at the local Anganwadi (during pregnancy and six months after child birth) as well as maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 in installments.

The Act provides for the creation of State Food Commissions.

The main function of the State Commission is to monitor the implementation of the Act, give advice to the State Governments and their agencies, and inquire into violations of entitlements.

State Commissions also have to hear appeals against orders of the District Grievance Redressal Officer and prepare annual reports.

The Act also provides for a two-tier grievance redressal structure, involving the District Grievance Redressal Officer (DGRO) and State Food Commission.

Mandatory transparency provisions include; placing all PDS-related records in the public domain; conducting periodic social audits of the PDS and other welfare schemes, using information and communication technology to ensure transparent recording of transactions at all levels and setting up vigilance committees at all levels to supervise all schemes under the Act.

The National Food Security Act and its provisions are really impressive.

Then there is the news of the State Government pulling up its socks to start implementing NFSA in Manipur from the month of July.

But frankly, we are not sure if the State Government has readied all the infrastructure and machinery needed to implement the Act and its many benevolent provisions.

It is the implementation or execution part where the State Government fails unfailingly.

This can be gleaned from the way Public Distribution System or PDS is being implemented in the State. Many PDS items like sugar and wheat are not reaching the beneficiaries. Over the years, PDS items have been reduced to only rice and SK oil.

Even these two items are distributed at irritatingly irregular intervals that too in much lower quantities than the quantities specified by the Government.

As suggested by the provisions of the Act, Anganwadi centres have significant roles.

Anganwadi centres and their management system is another area where the State Government’s inefficacy in implementing projects/schemes is exposed naked.

The sorry state of affairs with regard to implementation of Public Distribution System can be traced to too much of intervention both at the bureaucratic and political level.

It is everybody’s knowledge how Ministers and MLAs influence and orchestrate the process of selecting PDS agents.

According to official calculations, NFSA would cover 90 per cent of the State’s population.

What a huge relief it would be to the revenue-starved State Government provided NFSA can be implemented in letter and spirit!

Before enforcing NFSA, the existing pattern of implementing PDS must be streamlined first. Otherwise, NFSA would turn out a big joke in the State.

The Government must ensure that what the NFSA entitles to the State’s poor are not hijacked by a few influential and well connected cliques.