“The hungry must not be left out”

The steering group of the Right to Food Campaign on Saturday expressed its apprehension about doing away with the distribution of subsidised foodgrains to Above Poverty line (APL) beneficiaries under the Public Distribution System (PDS), as suggested by the Supreme Court.

While welcoming the court's order on rotting foodgrains, the campaign, that is pressing for universal PDS, has said that leaving out APL would mean that “large numbers of hungry people get left out.”

In a press statement issued here, the campaign, a conglomeration of non-governmental organisations, said: “Limiting the percentage of people covered under the BPL to only 36 per cent has meant that huge numbers of the hungry get left out. With the present situation of runaway prices of foodgrains, and a nutritional and food emergency situation in the country, abolishing a system of subsidised foodgrains for those who are outside the BPL [Below Poverty Line] list will result in many going hungry. Those poor who have been excluded from the BPL must have the right to avail themselves of the APL grain, which is at less than half the market price of grain.”

‘Expand storage'

While urging the government to double the present procurement of foodgrains, the campaign said that rather than limiting the procurement to the current storage capacity, the government must go in for the expansion of decentralised storage capacity and storage.

It differed with the suggestion for introduction of fortified atta in the PDS, as flour has a shelf life of only a fortnight, while wheat grains can last up to a year. “Replacing wheat with fortified atta will lead to more corruption due to central processing of wheat by private flour mills.”

Referring to the Centre's decision to release 2.5 million tonne of foodgrains under the PDS, the campaign demanded that this be utilised to expand the Antyodaya Anna Yojana in all districts that were declared as drought-affected during the last kharif season or are suffering from drought this year.

Priority groups

It also demanded the extension of Antyodaya entitlements to all the priority groups without any quota/limit on the number of households living at the risk of hunger. This would include landless agriculture labourers, marginal farmers, rural artisans/craftsmen, slum dwellers, daily-wage earners, single-women and widows-headed households, children or terminally-ill persons, disabled persons, senior citizens with no assured means of subsistence, persons living with HIV/AIDS, homeless persons, transgender and all primitive tribal households.

Among signatories to the press release are: Annie Raja (National Federation of Indian Women); Anuradha Talwar (New Trade Union Initiative); Arun Gupta (Breastfeeding Promotion Network of India); Arundhati Dhuru (National Alliance of People's Movement of India); Ashok Bharti (National Conference of Dalit Organisations); Anjali Bhardwaj and Nikhil Dey (The National Campaign for People's Right to Information); Kavita Srivastava (People's Union for Civil Liberties); Mira Shiva and Vandana Prasad (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan).