All you need to know about National Food Security Bill : 3.

12/10/2016.
       776.
                All Members,
         Respected family members of this great holy Nation.

Sub : All you need to know about National Food Security Bill
Part-3.

Ref : Media Reports - First post

Here are a few facts about the Bill:

Merits and demerits :

1.

• Crisil Research believes the proper implementation of the Bill "will lower spending on foodgrains by below poverty line households, and free up resources for spending on other goods and services, in particular health, education, and nutritious food."

• It sees the Bill enabling an additional savings of around Rs 4,400 this year for each BPL household that begins to purchase subsidised food. This savings equals around 8 per cent and 5 per cent of the annual expenditure of a rural and urban household, respectively.

• For rural households the savings amount exceeds their current annual medical and educational spends. Higher disposable income would also allow BPL households to spend more on protein-rich food, thereby improving their nutritional intake, Crisil said.

• However, the research house has said key to accruing all these benefits is the proper implementation. "While the benefits of the Bill could go well beyond just the provision of food, the success of the scheme and its welfare impact lies in identifying the poor and making sure that they are able to avail the food subsidy," it said.

2.

• Many critics of the scheme converge on this point. They say beneficiaries do not stand to gain as about 40 percent of rice and wheat earmarked for the poor gets siphoned off due to corruption. An inefficient distribution channel also leads to waste.

• Implementing the bill in a fair, equitable and transparent manner is going to be a big challenge for the government.

3.

• Many agriculture experts believe that Food Bill which proposes to provide grains to people at very cheap rates may discourage the agriculture production in the country. Hence it must make sure that farmers should not be burdened with the cost of subsidising the supply.

• Economists have raised concerns about the cost to the exchequer at a time when the government is struggling to bridge the fiscal and current account deficits. Fitch Ratings has said it was getting more challenging for India to meet its fiscal deficit target in the current fiscal year ending March 2014 with revenues slowing, Reuters reported today.

• Economists of the Government's Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), who define the roadmap of agricultural policies, have calculated "additional" subsidy burden of Rs 1.20 lakh crore per annum from the existing Rs 90,000 crore.

4.

• The Centre intends to delegate the task of construction of additional storage to the states, which may not be practically feasible given constrained centre-state relations among diverse political parties.

• The government does not even have enough storage capacity to store the amount of grain that it currently procures and will have to procure from the farmers in the years to come. So more grains could be dumped in the open and will rot as a result.

Thank you for reading
           JAIHIND.
            To be continued...