India's annual per capita cereal consumption has fallen to 174 kg, lower than that in the least-developed countries (182 kg), and 44 percent below world average. India ranks 67th in the Global Hunger Index among 84 countries, and scores worse than Pakistan and Nepal. Hunger and under-nourishment remain the greatest black-mark on India's development record and a source of shame despite two decades of rapid GDP growth. India's poor will pay a high price for the NAC's failure.

The NAC proposes a law to provide an entitlement to subsidised food for at least three-quarters of India's population, comprising 90 percent of the rural public and 50 percent of the urban population. The 75 percent is to be divided into “priority households”—who would have a monthly entitlement of 35 kg at a subsidised price of Rs 3 a kg for rice, Rs 2 for wheat and Re 1 for millets—, and “general households”, who would have an entitlement of 20 kg “at a price not exceeding 50 percent of the current Minimum Support Price”—which translates into Rs 5.50-6 per kg.

The NAC had earlier endorsed a proposal for universalising the PDS in one-fourth of India in the first phase. But it abandoned it. It has however extended legal entitlements to programmes such as mid-day meal schemes, maternity benefit schemes and Integrated Child Development Schemes along with “new components” like community kitchens for feeding destitutes, vulnerable groups and street children.

The “priority” category still excludes more than half the rural population and over 70 percent of the urban population. Sadly, the two categories are only slightly modified versions of the notoriously inaccurate below-poverty-line (BPL) and above-poverty-line (APL) classes. The NAC's designation of 46 percent of rural households as “priority” is only slightly higher than the Tendulkar committee's estimate of rural BPL families (41.8 percent). And its 28 percent urban “priority” households are barely more numerous than the Tendulkar estimates of BPL families who comprise 25.7 percent of city-dwellers.

The “priority”-“general” differentiation is to be left to the government. Going by past patterns, this is likely to be arbitrary, unsatisfactory and unfair. Numerous surveys have shown that BPL categorisation contains two kinds of error: exclusion of those who are poor but lack the clout to get recognised as such; and the error of false inclusion, under which the names of the non-poor enter BPL lists because of political manipulation. The exclusion rate can be as high as 50 to 60 percent. The false inclusion error leads to grain diversion of 30 percent or more away from the poor.

The best way to minimise the errors is to universalise the PDS. Past experience in Kerala, and current PDS performance in Tamil Nadu, establish the decisive superiority of universalisation. This is not wasteful, as might be thought. The process of accessing the PDS is self-selective. The rich don't need to use it, but the poor do. According to one study of the universal PDS in Kerala, families with a monthly income of Rs 1,000 or less bought 71 percent of their PDS entitlements, but those with incomes exceeding Rs 3,000 only purchased 6 percent of what they were entitled to.

If the government can currently procure about 55 million tonnes of foodgrains (of a total output of 230-240 million tonnes), it can almost just as easily procure 85 million tonnes, the highest estimated quantity needed for a universal PDS.

So, one must appreciate NAC member, food security activist and eminent economist Jean Dreze's note of dissent, in which he says the NAC “began its deliberations on a visionary note”, but yielded to official pressure to accept artificial constraints, including a low cap on the food subsidy. Dreze argues: “The NAC proposals are a great victory for the government—they allow it to appear to be doing something radical for food security, but it is actually more of the same.” A particularly conservative role was played in this by the Prime Minister's Office and Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav, who was nominated to the NAC by Prime Minister Singh.

The final outcome, says Dreze, is “a minimalist proposal that misses many important elements of food security” including creating entitlements for especially vulnerable groups like children and old people. Such “non-PDS entitlements have been diluted beyond recognition. Entire fields of intervention that are crucial for food security have been left out ….”

The government argued that it would be unwise to procure more grain than the last three years' average of 55 million tonnes. This is a specious plea. The long-term trend is towards a steady increase in procurement at 5 percent-plus a year. Universalisation needs no more than a continuation of this trend.

Ultimately, the government will spend barely half the amount on food security as it does on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the principal achievement of the first United Progressive Alliance regime (2004-2008). That's hardly an expansive commitment to UPA-2's flagship social programme.

An ambitious, effective and comprehensive food security law would have made hunger history in India and created conditions in which the underprivileged would live a life with human dignity, without worrying about the next meal. But that was not to be. The poor will still have to struggle for two square meals a day even as they fight a callous bureaucracy to include them in the “priority” list.

This failure is all the more grievous and hurtful because the funds needed for universal food security—about Rs 20,000 crores a year—are a fraction of the three-fold increase that has occurred in the government's revenues in the past 6 years, now running at Rs 700,000 crores. So the government can no longer plead—if it ever legitimately did—a paucity of funds to deny enough food to all its citizens. Instead, it blows up the bulk of this income on tax breaks and subsidies for rich people, fat-cat corporations and exporters. A government that spends 10 times more on the military than on its people's nutrition forfeits much of its claim to moral and democratic legitimacy.

The food security Bill raises larger questions about the NAC and its relationship to government and politics. The present body is much less of a civil society-based progressive policy-oriented pressure group than its first avatar. The earlier body didn't have diehard neoliberals like Dr Jadhav or fence-sitters like Dr MS Swaminathan, who forever bends to pressure from the top. Dr Singh has unduly influenced the new NAC's composition. For some reason, Ms Sonia Gandhi, who played a strong Left-leaning role in the first NAC, has decided not to cross swords with him.

The earlier NAC also had a synergistic relationship with the Left parties, which exerted a progressive influence on UPA-1 and kept up pressure in favour of NREGA, the Right to Information Act and other participatory measures. That relationship no longer exists. If today's NAC isn't as Left-of-Centre as before, nor is the Left proactive on social issues.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi would do well to reflect on the NAC. If it is the sole body that is meant to play the role of the UPA's conscience, it needs to have more of a soul and more panache and vibrancy. It should set its sights high and boldly attempt to do precisely what the government, with its innate conservatism and stick-in-the-mud mindset, would not ordinarily do.

This alone can fill the credibility gap between the promise of inclusive growth on which UPA-2 came to power, and its actual performance, with an inequality-enhancing, jobless, dualistic and exclusionary growth pattern, in which the vast majority has no stake.

Surely, if she has sound political instincts, Ms Gandhi would understand the need to fill the credibility gap on an issue that's crucial to the UPA's popularity and its ability to claim that it is pro-actively doing something to retain its relevance for the people. After all, of all the special initiatives taken by the UPA since 2004, the NAC has been the most productive, far more so than the National Knowledge Commission, which quickly lost its coherence on the affirmative action issue, or any of the numerous other advisory bodies set up by the PMO.

Ms Gandhi should be proud of the NAC and encourage it to act with freedom, moral clarity and unity of purpose so that it does something unusual. The NAC must rebuild its links with civil society movements and re-energise itself. In the last instance, it's answerable not to the government, but to society and to those who fight for emancipatory social change. (IPA Service)