FOOD SECURITY
The Prevention of Cruelties against Animals
Act imposes a penal charge of just 50 INR for the first time offence and even
in repeat-offence case the penalty is not deterring. Top up another 50 INR and
go ahead with repeated VIOLENCE. Amidst many such outdated laws in our country
there are also splendid attempts being made by the political class in bringing
flagship legislations like the recent Food Security Bill. I am inclined to give
my restricted opinion on this bill in this article and at the very outset I
request the reader not to get prejudiced and judge me by my name. I SWEAR that
am politically un-biased.
The Food Security is criticized for
prospective increase in the Fiscal Deficit of the country which already is
rising at an alarming rate. With burgeoning inflation, reducing investment,
deteriorating growth and unconvincingly low other macro-economic indicators
some feel that it is not the right time to have introduced the bill. They blame
the government squarely for the mis-timings of this bill and puts forth the
sudden fall in the Stock market values as a response of the general public to
this initiative. However they have failed to note that the financial outlay for
FSB is already being reckoned with in the Budget 2013-14 and this bill is on
the making for a decade and was one of the widely deliberated draft bills by
the Parliamentary Standing Committee.
More than
all these with over 25% of the World’s undernourished population living in
India and about 40% of the children under-5 as malnourished and underweight it
becomes imperative for the State to vest the public with a legal entitlement
that assures them of their food necessity. This in addition would help in
reducing the health expenditure and improve health indicators of this nation. The
demographic dividend of this nation shall be positively tapped only if the
people are vested with the basic necessity of assured food which would help
them in concentrating on their tasks and hence help in improving skills and
productivity. And the FSB is so comprehensive that it even attempts to bring in
social empowerment by making the eldest adult women of the household as the
head of the family which again is in response to the prevailing social value of
women being responsible for the family management. By bringing the ICDS,
maternal and material assistance to pregnant and lactating women, supplemental
nutrition supply to malnourished children as a legal entitlement it aims at a
holistic solution to the prevalent condition of mal-nutrition.
The capitalist classes’ opposition to the bill as a non-productive
expenditure is thus unfounded and they have to understand that without improvement
in the human resource indices they could not tap the skills of the demographic
potential that is prospectively inherent in our society.
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