Whatever the nature of the debates that it may provoke, the National Advisory Council headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi has — apparently after contentious deliberation — produced a fairly detailed conceptual scheme that is expected to provide the basic inputs for framing the Food Security Bill due to come up in Parliament shortly. The food security provision for the poor is UPA-2’s big-ticket social sector project just as the NREGS had been the chief anti-poverty measure in UPA’s first term in office. The NREGS had led to two broad discussions: who will foot the bill, and will it provide universal or cent per cent coverage to all the poor in the country? Fortunately, the country did not permit itself to be derailed by voices of concern on these points. Eventually, it turned out that NREGS — although it is implemented in a slipshod way and is shot through with corruption, especially in the poorly administered states of the country — actually put some money in the hands of the rural poor throughout India, and this went on to boost aggregate demand in the system and was a factor that saw the country out of a threatened economic trough in the wake of the worldwide recession that is still plaguing leading Western economies. In the end, NREGS came to be perceived as beneficial to our economic system, whatever the initial anxieties, although some continue to voice a few worries. The ideological maximalists too were harsh with their criticism of the NREGS proposal that had been first mooted. The scheme sought to cover only 100 districts in India to begin with, and those that spoke in the name of the poor suggested that this was to feeble and was tokenism by another name. Life has shown this not to be the case, although there are deficiencies galore in implementation.
The criticism of those who desire the best straightaway has already begun to be attracted by the NAC’s food security proposal. Prof. Jean Dreze, a leading light of the NAC who has done laudable theoretical and empirical work on the state of the country’s poor, has distanced himself from this proposal, saying that he would have liked universal coverage. This conveys the idealist’s dream, and is not the pragmatist’s method. The latter believes that it is best to get started and try and improve in the light of experience. Thus the so-called “consensus” that the NAC has produced on food security is a watered down version of the “first best” solution, and is probably not even the second best. And yet, it is hard to endorse the position that we must either have all or nothing. The way matters stand, the current proposal seeks to provide foodgrain cover to around 75 per cent of the very poor in the country, in both rural and urban areas. It is far from certain that even this will be attempted with sincerity and without corrupt elements having a field day. No less significantly, the public distribution network has been all but obliterated. To get it going in the right spirit calls for close supervision as well as expenditure, and will be among the key challenges before the government. For all the problems that can be envisaged, the measure is unprecedented and calls for political support. Those who might question it on the money argument (“who will foot the bill?”) may find that a workforce that has food in its belly is more productive and less disaffected. Seen in this light, the measure deserves their support. India is a fast-paced economy but it continues to have the largest proportion of the world’s very poor, countrywise. This is why the solution that we envisage needs to transcend the imperatives of the market.