Sonia for Rs85,000-cr gift to poor

DNA, April 5, 2010
Mumbai: Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is heading the empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on the Food Security Bill that is meeting on Monday evening, is a worried man. Insiders say if National Advisory Council (NAC) chairperson Sonia Gandhi forces the government to revise the ambit of the bill, the food subsidy will shoot up from Rs55,578 crore to about Rs85,000 crore this fiscal.


The EGoM will be crucial as a 30% rise in the number of below-poverty-line (BPL) families, on one hand, and an allocation of 10kg per family per month extra food grains will put an additional burden of nearly Rs30,000 crore on the budget estimates.

The government is already providing 25kg of rice at Rs5.65 per kg or wheat at Rs4.15 per kg to 6.53 crore BPL families. Even among them, the government has carved out 2.43 crore Antyodaya families (poorest of the poor) and gives them rice for Rs3 and wheat for Rs2 per kg. The food subsidy burden during 2010-11 on this count is Rs55,578 crore. Last fiscal, the subsidy was Rs42,490 crore. The NAC wish list is that the quantity be raised from 25kg per family to 35kg and all BPL families be given wheat or rice at Rs3 per kg. The number of BPL families, after the cancellation of 1.5 crore bogus ration cards in a countrywide drive, has gone up to 9.5 crore. This is a jump of almost 30% in the BPL population. Increasing the food grain allocation as per the NAC’s wish will lead to an added burden of 40%.

It may also be borne in mind that the central government is already giving wheat at Rs2 per kg to 2.42 crore Antyodaya families.

Several states, particularly Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, currently provide rice at Re1 per kg or Rs2 per kg, with a cap of 25kg per month. For the Antyodaya category, Tamil Nadu gives 35kg at Re1 a kg; the state has no division of APL and BPL. Orissa has been offering 25kg of rice at Rs2 per month for all families in the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput belt for two years. The food subsidy bill of these states runs into thousands of crores.

But activists and social groups say the government continues to be insensitive about Sonia Gandhi’s ‘aam aadmi’, and she has to continue fighting for them. When UPA-I launched the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the bureaucracy had raised objections saying there will be no funds. The proposed bill sought to ‘reduce’ what the country’s poorest of the poor were already getting under the Antyodaya Scheme.