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What we need is not a food security Bill but a hunger elimination Act

In the decade or so that i was at the Planning Commission, i always had advisory responsibility for the food ministry/public distribution system, among other issues of development policy. It did not take very long to find out that the fundamental problem with the system was about so-called "leakages" abetted by corruption: One soon learnt that the Food Corporation of India (FCI) was one of the most inefficient and corrupt organisations in government.
At that time, available estimates of leakage plus administrative costs ranged between 40% and 55%. The other problem was of exclusion — some poor people did not have access to ration cards or subsidised food, from which arose horrifying reports of starvation in remote and tribal areas of the country. This led me to propose the introduction of a food credit/debit card using smart card technology, which could be integrated with the food-for-work programme and also have the inbuilt flexibility to change over to an income transfer system if desired.
Instead of dealing with the very difficult political and bureaucratic problems that have stymied genuine reform of the food system, the food security Bill proposes to deal with these problems with "a stroke of the pen". Unfortunately, very little will change, besides providing lucrative new opportunities for bureaucratic and political corruption.
What are the real problems that are still awaiting serious government and NGO attention? In 2004-05, 2% of households suffered from hunger at some point during the year and about 25% of the people were below the poverty line, but as many as 45% of children below the age of three years were malnourished. If we leave philosophy and politics aside, these facts suggest that, first, as hunger affects only 8% of the poor, the food security Bill and anti-poverty programmes are not the best way to reach the hungry, who are dispersed across the country and in tribal and remote areas.
The hungry have to be individually and geographically identified and/or located. Once that is done, it would not cost much to eliminate hunger through direct cash or food transfers, depending on whether there are or are not competitive food markets in the area where they live. Thus, in remote or hilly areas it is probably necessary to supply food. Secondly, malnutrition is a much bigger problem than poverty and the causes are unlikely to be the same, even though there may be some overlap. Anti-poverty measures/programmes are unlikely to solve the malnutrition problem.
Analysis of the state-wise 2004-05 National Sample Survey and the 2005-06 National Family Health Survey data led to the conclusion that the most important cause of malnutrition in India was the abysmal state of `public health` in terms of sanitation, pure drinking water and public knowledge about the importance of cleanliness (a la germs in dirty water, dirt and grime) and nutrition (basic food groups etc).
If this appears surprising, think about the simple act of eating and digesting food and absorbing energy and nutrition from it. A child or an adult sick with diarrhoea or dysentery can eat as much as she wants but will not be able to absorb it effectively. Recent medical research goes further to show that even those children who are living in unsanitary conditions, but do not show any symptoms of gastro-intestinal disease, are infected with germs in their intestines that do not allow them to absorb nutrients from the food they eat.
Cross-country analysis of malnutrition data confirms the conclusions of the India analysis. The quality of public health, as measured by variables such as access to better sanitation and improved water sources, explains much of the cross-country variations in the prevalence of malnutrition and high malnutrition in India relative to other countries with similar levels of per capita income and poverty.
Improvements in environmental sanitation are the clearest and most effective policy-programme tool for the central government to reduce, if not eliminate, the excessively high levels of malnutrition in India. The cross-country data complements the interstate study by showing that female primary education is an important factor in reducing child malnutrition, by helping spread information and knowledge about personal hygiene, sanitation and nutrition.
The food security Bill will have little or no effect on malnutrition, poverty and hunger. Hunger can be eliminated if and only if the government and/or NGOs identify the 40 lakh affected households and ensure that cash or food reaches the principal female (mother) of the household. An `Elimination of Hunger Act` with severe penalties for officials in whose area a hungry family is found, could do this at a small fraction of the cost.
Child malnutrition can be dramatically reduced, if not eliminated, within a decade through a massive "public health" campaign: This would ensure a modern sewerage and sanitation system in every urban, semi-urban and semi-rural area and pure drinking water, septic tanks and lavatories in rural areas.

2. Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA)

I. Background

Evolving the design of the wage employment programmes to more effectively fight poverty, the Central Government formulated the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA ) in 2005. With its legal framework and rights based approach, MGNREGA provides employment to those who demand it and is a paradigm shift from earlier programmes. Notified on September 7, 2005, MGNREGA aims at enhancing

livelihood security by providing at least one hundred days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work. The Act covered 200 districts in its first phase, implemented on February 2, 2006, and was extended to 130 additional districts in 2007 -2008. All the remaining rural areas have been notified with effect from April 1, 2008.

1.1 Salient features of the Act

Right based Framework: For adult members of a rural household willing to do unskilled manual work

.·Time bound Guarantee: 15 days for provision of employment, else unemployment allowance

· Upto 100 days in a financial year per household, depending on the actual demand.

· Labour Intensive Works: 60:40 wage and material ratio for permissible works; no contractors/machinery.

· Decentralized Planning

O Gram Sabhas to recommend works

oAt least 50% of works by Gram Panchayats for execution

o Principal role of PRIs in planning, monitoring and implementation

· Work site facilities : Crèche, drinking water, first aid and shade provided at worksites

·  Women empowerment: At least one -third of beneficiaries should be women

· Transparency & Accountability: Proactive disclosure through Social Audits, Grievance Redressal Mechanism,

· Implementation Under Sec 3, States are responsib le for providing work in accordance with the Scheme. Under Sec 4, every state government is required to make a scheme for providing not less than 100 days of guaranteed employment in a financial year, to those who demand work

· Funding ØCentral Government -100% of wages for unskilled manual work, 75% of material cost of the schemes including payment of wages to skilled and semi skilled workers

. State Government-25% of material including payment of wages to skilled and semi skilled workers cost

. 100% of unemployment state government 1.2 Non Negotiable

• Only Job Card holders to be employed for MGNREGA works

•To provide employment within 15 days of application

• No contractor

• Task to be performed by using manual labour & not machines

• Muster rolls to be maintained on work sites

• Proactive disclosure of information.

• Wage payments to be through accounts in banks/post offices

• Wage material ratio  60:40

• At least 50% of the works in terms of cost under a Scheme to be implemented through GPs

2. Programme Implementation and Outcomes in LWE Districts: The Ministry is also continually reviewing the implementation of MGNREGA in LWE districts. In FY 2008 - 09, the average person day of employment per household was 48 days for the year 2008 -09 and 2009 -10 and 47 days for 2010-11. 93% of rural households have been provided job cards against the national average of 68% up to FY 2009 -10 and over 9% households completed 100 days in FY 2008 -09 ,2009 – 10 and 2010 -11 as compared to 10 % households in FY 2008-09

, 2009-10and 2010-11.The women participation rate in these districts is 45%. (See annexure 1)

3 Natural Resource Regeneration and impact on agricultural productivity

i)          The works undertaken through MGNREGA give priority to activities related to water harvesting, groundwater recharge, drought - proofing, and flood protection. Its focus on eco- restoration and sustainable livelihoods will lead over time, to an increase in land productivity and aid the workers in moving from wage employment to sustainable employment . Almost 80% works relate to soil and water conservation. MGNREGA works by their very nature place stress on increasing land productivity, recharging ground water and increasing water availability.

ii)         Recent amendment of the Act to permit MGNREGA works on individual land of small and marginal farmers who constitute 89% of the farming community, in addition to the individual land of SC/ST/BPL/IAY/ land reform beneficiaries will augment the impact on agricultural productivity and household income.

4.In order to appraise the performance and impact of MGNREGA in a selected sample of

Districts of Chattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh , the Ministry commissioned a study by Centre

Social Development. The main findings of the study are:

a. Increase in household income: In LWE areas of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, income of rural labour households has gone up as a result of this programme.

b.Increase in agricultural wages: In LWE areas of Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh, wages in various agricultural operations have gone up as a result of implementation of MGNREGA.This has lead to an increase in fertilizer use, and quality seeds

c. Reduction in distress migration: In village Besrapal, located in Bastar District of Chattisgarh, village Nawagarh, located in Gumla District and village Mahel, located in Khunti District of Jharkhand, the incidence of out-migration from the village to distant places for manual works had come down as a result of MGNREGA works.

5 . In order to address constraints like timely measurement of works , preparation of shelf of works, and delays in wage payments, the Ministry has taken the following initiatives:

a) Timely measurement of works: Recognizing the need for adequate human resource for timely measurement of work, the Ministry took the following initiatives:

· All activities required to process payment of wages must invariably be completed as per

timelines given in the circular of the Ministry dated 29^th Oct 2010. This includes; closure of muster on 6^th day, MB to be brought to appropriate authority on 8^th day or before and so on. Penal provision (Sec 25 of the Act) should invariably be invoked for delays.

A flow chart with time schedule has been suggested to the States.

I.Closing of muster roll by 6th day after start of the work.

II.Bringing muster roll measurement book by 8th day.

III.Entry of muster roll in MIS and generation of pay orders by 9th and 10th days.

IV. Submission of pay order at the Block post office/bank, generation of

information wage slip transfer of pay order at the village post office/bank within 11th and 12th day.

V. Deposit of wages in the account of wage earners 13th day.

VI. Entry of disbursement of wage into MIS within 16th day.

· As mentioned in operational guideline (section 6.4.4) Mates/Barefoot Engineers who would work under the guidance of the Technical Assistants to help out with the technical surveys and readings, worksite layouts and maintenance of technical records.

· Executive instructions on deployment of personnel: The Ministry has issued a circular on recruitment of personnel within this 6%. The circular recommends recruitment of 1 Panchayat Development Officer in select Panchayat, 1 technical assistants for every 6000 HHs.

b) Timely wage Payment

· The Ministry is also instructing the states to operationalize the BC model and report regularly on progress. The states are to identify unserved areas for BC model and discuss with banks. The Ministry has also issued executive instructions for appointment of Business correspondent ( BC) system

· Many Post Offices do not keep adequate cash amount.

Ministry has issues instruction to State that the District Administration should place adequate amounts with all the post offices to facilitate payment;

· District Administration should facilitate transport and security for carrying cash

· Alternate Institutions like SHG Federations, LAMPS, Non-Scheduled Commercial Banks and Private Banks like Cooperative Bank, RRBs, Gramin Banks etc, JFM Groups of proven track records and others could be authorized to act as BCs.

· Pending complete roll out of BCs / Post offices, alternative arrangements such as mobile banking etc should be provided.

C: Social Audits

·Social Audits enable the rural communities to monitor and analyze the quality, durability and usefulness of

MGNREGA works as well as mobilize awareness and enforcement on their rights. Social Audit is an important tool by which the people can improve and devise strategies to enhance the quality of implementation of

MGNREGA .The Ministry has accorded  utmost importance to the organization of Social Audits by the Gram Panchayats  and issued instructions to the States to make necessary arrangements for the purpose.

The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Audit of Schemes Rules,

2011 have been formulated and shared with States/ UTs for Action.

D: work on individual land permitted under MGRNEGA

· Amendment of the Act to permit MGNREGA works on individual land of small and  marginal farmers who constitute 89% of the farming community, in addition to the individual land of SC/ST/BPL/IAY/ land reform beneficiaries will augment the impact on agricultural productivity and household income.Following works can be taken up

Armying India

India is poised to become one of the four largest military powers in the world by the end of the decade. It needs to think about what that means.

            UNLIKE many other Asian countries—and in stark contrast to neighbouring Pakistan—India has never been run by its generals. The upper ranks of the powerful civil service of the colonial Raj were largely Hindu, while Muslims were disproportionately represented in the army. On gaining independence the Indian political elite, which had a strong pacifist bent, was determined to keep the generals in their place. In this it has happily succeeded.
But there have been costs. One is that India exhibits a striking lack of what might be called a strategic culture. It has fought a number of limited wars—one with China, which it lost, and several with Pakistan, which it mostly won, if not always convincingly—and it faces a range of threats, including jihadist terrorism and a persistent Maoist insurgency. Yet its political class shows little sign of knowing or caring how the country’s military clout should be deployed.
That clout is growing fast. For the past five years India has been the world’s largest importer of weapons (see chart). A deal for $12 billion or more to buy 126 Rafale fighters from France is slowly drawing towards completion. India has more active military personnel than any Asian country other than China, and its defence budget has risen to $46.8 billion. Today it is the world’s seventh-largest military spender; IHS Jane’s, a consultancy, reckons that by 2020 it will have overtaken Japan, France and Britain to come in fourth. It has a nuclear stockpile of 80 or more warheads to which it could easily add more, and ballistic missiles that can deliver some of them to any point in Pakistan. It has recently tested a missile with a range of 5,000km (3,100 miles), which would reach most of China.

Which way to face?

Apart from the always-vocal press and New Delhi’s lively think-tanks, India and its leaders show little interest in military or strategic issues. Strategic defence reviews like those that take place in America, Britain and France, informed by serving officers and civil servants but led by politicians, are unknown in India. The armed forces regard the Ministry of Defence as woefully ignorant on military matters, with few of the skills needed to provide support in areas such as logistics and procurement (they also resent its control over senior promotions). Civil servants pass through the ministry rather than making careers there. The Ministry of External Affairs, which should be crucial to informing the country’s strategic vision, is puny. Singapore, with a population of 5m, has a foreign service about the same size as India’s. China’s is eight times larger.
The main threats facing India are clear: an unstable, fading but dangerous Pakistan; a swaggering and intimidating China. One invokes feelings of superiority close to contempt, the other inferiority and envy. In terms of India’s regional status and future prospects as a “great power”, China matters most; but the vexatious relationship with Pakistan still dominates military thinking.
A recent attempt to thaw relations between the two countries is having some success. But tension along the “line of control” that separates the two sides in the absence of an agreed border in Kashmir can flare up at any time. To complicate things, China and Pakistan are close, and China is not above encouraging its grateful ally to be a thorn in India’s side. Pakistan also uses jihadist terrorists to conduct a proxy war against India “under its nuclear umbrella”, as exasperated Indians put it. The attack on India’s parliament in 2001 by Jaish-e-Mohammed, a terrorist group with close links to Pakistan’s intelligence service, brought the two countries to the brink of war. The memory of the 2008 commando raid on Mumbai by Lashkar-e-Taiba, another terrorist organisation, is still raw.
Pakistan’s nuclear capabilities are a constant concern. Its arsenal of warheads, developed with Chinese assistance, is at least as large as India’s and probably larger. It has missiles of mainly Chinese design that can reach most Indian cities and, unlike India, it does not have a “no first use” policy. Indeed, to offset the growing superiority of India’s conventional forces, it is developing nuclear weapons for the battlefield that may be placed under the control of commanders in the field.

Much bigger and richer, India has tended to win its wars with Pakistan. Its plans for doing so again, if it feels provoked, are worrying. For much of the past decade the army has been working on a doctrine known as “Cold Start” that would see rapid armoured thrusts into Pakistan with close air support. The idea is to inflict damage on Pakistan’s forces at a mere 72 hours’ notice, seizing territory quickly enough not to incur a nuclear response. At a tactical level, this assumes a capacity for high-tech combined-arms warfare that India may not possess. At the strategic level it supposes that Pakistan will hesitate before unleashing nukes, and it sits ill with the Indian tradition of strategic restraint. Civilian officials and politicians unconvincingly deny that Cold Start even exists.
Bharat Karnad of the Centre for Policy Research, a think-tank, believes Pakistan’s main danger to India is as a failed state, not a military adversary. He sees Cold Start as a “blind alley” which wastes military and financial resources that should be used to deter the “proto-hegemon”, China. Others agree. In 2009 A.K. Antony, the defence minister, told the armed forces that they should consider China rather than Pakistan the main threat to India’s security and deploy themselves accordingly. But not much happened. Mr Karnad sees feeble civilian strategic direction combining with the army’s innate conservatism to stop India doing what it needs to.
The “line of actual control” between China and India in Arunachal Pradesh, which the Chinese refer to as South Tibet, is not as tense as the one in Kashmir. Talks between the two countries aimed at resolving the border issue have been going on for ten years and 15 rounds. In official statements both sides stress that the dispute does not preclude partnership in pursuit of other goals.

But it is hard to ignore the pace of military investment on the Chinese side of the line. Brigadier Gurmeet Kanwal of the Centre for Land Warfare Studies points to the construction of new railways, 58,000km of all-weather roads, five air bases, supply hubs and communication posts. China would be able to strike with power and speed if it decided to seize the Indian-controlled territory which it claims as its own, says Mr Karnad. He thinks the Indian army, habituated to “passive-reactive” planning when it comes to the Chinese, has deprived itself of the means to mount a counter-offensive.

Unable to match Chinese might on land, an alternative could be to respond at sea. Such a riposte was floated in a semi-official strategy document called “Nonalignment 2.0”, promoted last year by some former national security advisers and blessed by the current one, Shivshankar Menon. India’s naval advantage might allow it, for example, to impede oil traffic heading for China through the Malacca Strait.

China and India are both rapidly developing their navies from coastal defence forces into instruments that can project power further afield; within this decade, they expect to have three operational carrier groups each. Some Indian strategists believe that, as China extends its reach into the Indian Ocean to safeguard its access to natural resources, the countries’ navies are as likely to clash as their armies.

India’s navy has experience, geography and some powerful friends on its side. However, it is still the poor relation to India’s other armed services, with only 19% of the defence budget compared with 25% for the air force and 50% for the army.

The air force also receives the lion’s share of the capital-equipment budget—double the amount given to the navy. It is buying the Rafales from France and upgrading its older, mainly Russian, fighters with new weapons and radars. A joint venture between Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Russia’s Sukhoi is developing a “fifth generation” strike fighter to rival America’s F-35. As well as indulging its pilots’ need for speed, though, the air force is placing a new emphasis on “enablers”. It is negotiating the purchase of six Airbus A330 military tankers and five new airborne early-warning and control aircraft. It has also addressed weaknesses in heavy lift by buying ten giant Boeing C-17 transports, with the prospect of more to come. Less clear is the priority the air force gives to the army’s requirements for close air support over its more traditional role of air defence, particularly after losing a squabble over who operates combat helicopters.

With the army training for a blitzkrieg against Pakistan and the navy preparing to confront Chinese blue-water adventurism, it is easy to get the impression that each service is planning for its own war without much thought to the requirements of the other two. Lip-service is paid to co-operation in planning, doctrine and operations, but this “jointness” is mostly aspirational. India lacks a chief of the defence staff of the kind most countries have. The government, ever-suspicious of the armed forces, appears not to want a single point of military advice. Nor do the service chiefs, jealous of their own autonomy.

The absence of a strategic culture and the distrust between civilian-run ministries and the armed forces has undermined military effectiveness in another way—by contributing to a procurement system even more dysfunctional than those of other countries. The defence industrial sector, dominated by the sprawling Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), remains stuck in state control and the country’s protectionist past. According to a recent defence-ministry audit, only 29% of the products developed by the DRDO in the past 17 years have entered service with the armed forces. The organisation is a byword for late-arriving and expensive flops.

The cost of developing a heavy tank, the Arjun, exceeded the original estimates by 20 times. But according to Ajai Shukla, a former officer who now writes on defence for the Business Standard, the army wants to stick with its elderly Russian T-72s and newer T-90s, fearing that the Arjun, as well as being overweight, may be unreliable. A programme to build a light combat aircraft to replace the Mirages and MiG-21s of an earlier generation started more than quarter of a century ago. But the Tejas aircraft that resulted has still not entered service.

There are signs of slow change. These include interest in allowing partnerships between India’s small but growing private-sector defence firms and foreign companies, which should stimulate technology transfer. But the deal to buy the Rafale has hit difficulties because, though Dassault would prefer to team up with private-sector firms such as Tata and Reliance, the government wants it to work with stodgy HAL. Even if Dassault had a free choice of partners, though, it is not clear that Indian industry could handle the amount of work the contract seeks to set aside for it.

Richard Bitzinger, a former RAND Corporation analyst now at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, sums up the problem in a recent study for the Zurich-based International Relations and Security Network. If India does not stop coddling its existing state-run military-industrial complex, he says, it will never be capable of supplying its armed forces with the modern equipment they require. Without a concerted reform effort, a good part of the $200 billion India is due to spend on weaponry over the next 15 years looks likely to be wasted.

The tiger and the eagle

The money it will spend abroad also carries risks. Big foreign deals lend themselves to corruption. Investigations into accusations of bribery can delay delivery of urgently needed kit for years. The latest “scandal” of this sort surrounds a $750m order for helicopters from Italy’s Finmeccanica. The firm denies any wrongdoing, but the deal has been put on hold.

Britain, France, Israel and, above all, Russia (which still accounts for more than half of India’s military imports), look poised to be beneficiaries of the coming binge. America will get big contracts, too. But despite a ground-breaking civil nuclear deal in 2005 and the subsequent warming of relations, America is still regarded as a less politically reliable partner in Delhi. The distrust stems partly from previous arms embargoes, partly from America’s former closeness to Pakistan, partly from India’s concerns about being the junior partner in a relationship with the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

The dilemma over how close to get to America is particularly acute when it comes to China. America and India appear to share similar objectives. Neither wants the Indian Ocean to become a Chinese “lake”. But India does not want to provoke China into thinking that it is ganging up with America. And it worries that the complex relationship between America and China, while often scratchy, is of such vital importance that, in a crisis, America would dump India rather than face down China. An Indian navy ordered to close down China’s oil supplies would not be able to do so if its American friends were set against it.

India’s search for the status appropriate to its ever-increasing economic muscle remains faltering and uncertain. Its problems with Pakistan are not of the sort that can be solved militarily. Mr Karnad argues that India, from a position of strength, should build better relations with Pakistan through some unilateral gestures, for example cutting back the size of the armoured forces massed in the deserts of Rajasthan and withdrawing its short-range missiles. General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, head of Pakistan’s army, has declared internal terrorism to be a greater danger to his country than India. That may also offer an opportunity.

China’s confidence in its new military power is unnerving to India. But if a condescending China in its pomp is galling, one in economic trouble or political turmoil and pandering to xenophobic popular opinion would be worse. Japan and South Korea have the reassurance of formal alliances with America. India does not. It is building new relationships with its neighbours to the east through military co-operation and trade deals. But it is reluctant to form or join more robust institutional security frameworks.

Instead of clear strategic thinking, India shuffles along, impeded by its caution and bureaucratic inertia. The symbol of these failings is India’s reluctance to reform a defence-industrial base that wastes huge amounts of money, supplies the armed forces with substandard kit and leaves the country dependent on foreigners for military modernisation.

Since independence India has got away with having a weak strategic culture. Its undersized military ambitions have kept it out of most scrapes and allowed it to concentrate on other things instead. But as China bulks up, India’s strategic shortcomings are becoming a liability. And they are an obstacle to India’s dreams of becoming a true 21st-century power.