Importance of the Struggle for Food Security
Prakash
Karat
THE
Left parties are conducting a joint campaign and movement on
the issue of food
security throughout the country in July-August. This movement
is to demand a
universal public distribution system to ensure food security
for all citizens.
The
demand for a food security law which will ensure the right to
food for all
people has become all the more urgent and necessary as there
is no let-up in
the price rise of food items and as the food inflation rate
hovers around 10
per cent. India
has the largest number of malnourished and undernourished
people in the
world.
One
would have thought that in such a grim situation, the UPA
government would
urgently take up the Food Security Bill pending before
parliament. But it has
become evident that the government has other priorities.
HANKERING
FOR FREE
MARKET
ENTERPRISE
The
worsening economic situation has led to strident calls for the
implementation
of more neo-liberal measures. The economic slowdown is being
attributed to the
UPA-2 government’s failure to push through neo-liberal
reforms. The economic
advisors and the corporate media see the present impasse as
the most opportune
to prod the Manmohan Singh government into undertaking the
very measures which
have led to the crisis in the first place. The chorus of
demands are coming in
thick and fast: decontrol diesel pricing; open up multi-brand
retail trade to
FDI; stop harassing foreign investors and speculators with tax
avoidance
regulations; step up the disinvestment of shares in the public
sector
enterprises, and so on.
That
the UPA government is heeding to these demands became evident
once again in the
last few days. The prime minister has taken charge of the
finance portfolio
after the exit of Pranab Mukherjee on his becoming the
candidate for the post
of president. Immediately after assuming charge of the Finance
Ministry, the prime
minister met the officials of the ministry and told them: “We
need to reverse
the climate of pessimism. Revive the animal spirits in the
country’s economy;
there are problems on the tax front which need to be
addressed.” The “animal
spirits” is a refrain of the prime minister whenever he wishes
to give a fresh thrust
to free market enterprise.
The
advent of the prime minister to the Finance Ministry has led
to two immediate
steps being taken. The first is a re-look at the retrospective
tax amendment
passed in the finance bill during the last budget. This
amendment enables the
revival of the demand for capital gains tax on Vodafone to the
amount of Rs
13,000 crore. The
amendment was cited
as one of the main reasons for scaring off foreign investors
and FII flows.
Both C Rangarajan, the head of the prime minister’s Economic
Advisory Council,
and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning
Commission, have
decried this step. Though
this has been
passed by parliament, Ahluwalia had declared that it should be
used in the
rarest of occasions.
The
second step is the review of the General Anti-Avoidance Rules
(GAAR). These are
rules meant to check avoidance of tax on funds flowing into India
utilising
tax havens. This could have been used to check tax evasion by
those utilising
the Mauritius
route. Due to strong opposition of the financial lobbies, the
finance minister
had announced that its implementation would be postponed by a
year. Now the
effort is to scuttle it altogether.
At the efforts of the prime minister and his economic advisors
is to meet the
demands of finance capital and speculators. The revival of
investor sentiment
and “animal spirits” is designed to appease these interests.
For the rest, the
talk of curbing the fiscal deficit and the runaway expenditure
means austerity
measures for the people. The demand to urgently cut subsidies
on fuel and fertilisers
is a corollary of this.
DEMANDS
OF
THE
MOVEMENT
With
such an outlook to revive the economy, measures such as the
food security law
are seen as populist and wasteful. The food security
legislation was expected
to be passed in the monsoon session of parliament. But there
are no signs of
this happening. The
Standing Committee
of parliament looking into the legislation has not completed
its work yet. The
draft bill perpetuates the targeting of people into priority
(BPL) and general
(APL). This will automatically exclude 54 per cent of the
families in rural
areas and 72 per cent in the urban areas. The
below-poverty-line (BPL) cardholders
will have to pay Rs three per kg of rice when eight states are
providing rice
at Re one or two per kg for those in the BPL list.
The
government is eager to please the foreign speculators and
finance capital by
further liberalising their entry and ensuring that their
profits are not taxed
while people of India
are to suffer from hunger and malnutrition because the
government cannot
increase the food subsidy to provide for a public distribution
system for
all. It is in
this context that the Left
parties’ movement for food security assumes importance. In the
weeks to come,
lakhs of people are going to be mobilised on the four demands
of the campaign
which are as follows:
1)
No BPL or APL, we demand a universal public distribution
system
2)
35 kg of foodgrains at not more than Rs two per kg every month
for each family
3)
Scrap the Planning Commission’s bogus poverty estimates as the
basis for
welfare rights
4)
Implement the Swaminathan Commission recommendations for a
fair price and
profit margin for farmers.
