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The questionable Food Security Bill
Written By murali772 - 31 March, 2013
Democracy Elections Media Reports Economy India food security work ethic vote bank politics political correctness
The food security bill will condemn India’s poor to perpetual poverty. The bill plans to distribute grain to two thirds of India’s population at a 90 per cent subsidy costing over Rs 1,00,000 crores. The food security bill gives people something for nothing and thus weakens the work ethic. Giving people virtually free food will keep them dependent on a ‘mai baap party’, trapping them into a permanent vote bank. It is a brilliant strategy of the Congress party at the centre — both the voters and the party will thus have a vested interest in keeping people poor and dependent.
If the same Rs 1,00,000 crore were to be spent in providing public goods — roads, schools, power, and law and order — it would encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses, which would create sustainable jobs and raise the state’s tax revenues. These taxes, in turn, would make it possible to invest in more public goods. Thus, a virtuous circle would be created and lift the society’s standard of living. But the Congress would lose out for people would move out of poverty and out of its vote bank.
For the full text of a highly readable essay by Sri Gurcharan Das in the SToI, click here.
Can't agree with you more, Sir. While supporting the economically weaker sections is certainly a laudable objective, taking it beyond a limit is besides insulting and demoralising to those who earn their daily bread doing an honest day's work.
Muralidhar Rao
COMMENTS
Shades of GOP in our courtyard!
kbsyed61 - 31 March, 2013 - 16:43
Murali,
Your post reminds me of Republican Campaign manifesto against President Obama. The points of argument were more or less the same and at times went beyond actually painting the entire Afro-American community as lazy bums. In that argument they forgot that a large chunk of the 'Food Coupons' beneficiaries were Caucasian white conservative families, which formed the base of GOP.
Moral of the story is, instead of raising this selective bogey of criticizing the social welfare schemes irrespective of their merits, the discussion should be steered towards how to ensure that every penny of the govt is spend judiciously and spent on targeted objectives. How do we ensure that every body has fair chance to avenues of economic empowerment? A lofty aspiration to demand?
Your posts and Gurucharan's column doesn't offer any solution barring criticism of the proposed food security bill. In the enthusiasm of painting everything by govt as bad, you guys have just lost the balance of analyzing the merits of the program and its impact in short term and long term. The often repeated slogans of privatization will lead to prosperity, subsidies leads to corruption are also lofty ideals which are yet to be realized even in the 'Mecca Of Free Economy'. Let's discuss efficient ways of helping the needy not just the rich and wealthy. Let's not be selective critics.
The selective criticism, condemnation of wrongs is the worst damage we are inflicting on society and the nation.
Likes of Gurucharan doesn't have any issues when govt acquires farm lands and gift to Tata's and Ambanis. The CM is touted as symbol of growth and development. A hue & Cry is created around if govt for good or bad reasons plans to dole out welfare measures in kind or money. It is reforms when govt offers tax benefits to industrialists, but it is criminal waste if subsidized food is offered to the poor.
I am yet see like of Gurucharans coming out with any blue print to do away the fuel subsidies our industrialist friends enjoy for the their gas guzzlers, subsidized energy for their farms and industries?
I am yet to see likes of Gurucharan praising removal of tax benefits to the wealthy and rich.
In our own backyard, we have no grudge, no problem if the government goes ahead and funds projects to build signal free corridors worth 1.2 lakh crores , because it is suggested by likes of Corporate Honchos like Mr. Mohandas Pai. But a citizen demanded projects like pedestrian infrastructure in the city costing some pittance 300-500 crores, CRS costing 8000 crores raises eyebrows and every power in govt marches forward and shoots down the proposals citing pre-feasability and due diligence.
Likes of Gurucharn has no qualm with continuation of dens of corruption like DDAs, BDAs. I am yet to see one known name in the Bangalore city that has come forward to say, it is time BDA is shutdown, barring Prof. Ashwin Mahesh. How can they do that when they themselves are enjoying the fruits of BDA's corruption regime?
I am not for or against the proposed Food Bill. I am a supporter if the attempt is to deliver the benefit to the beneficiary. I am against if the existing PDS is not made efficient in the process. In the long run, all the welfare measures should be delivered in cash. Hope the Direct Cash Transfer becomes that tool and becomes a catalyst to remove the dead wood, corruption and inefficiencies in our delivery mechanisms.
In the parting, let me end my case with these. There is no evidence in the history that suggests that the state has no role in taking care of vulnerables. Even today the greatest welfare measures are given in the most developed countries like mecca of capitalism - USA. Food Stamps is the name of the welfare that are given to poor families in US.
We would be better off if we could get over this perpetual prosperity dreams and aspirations. When Sun sets, there is a dark night to pass before we see another dawn.
-Syed
aamdani atdhanni; kharchao rupaiah
murali772 - 1 April, 2013 - 12:23
@ Syed - When I ask for privatisation/ outsourcing, I am essentially asking for efficiency in delivery, which the public sector (particularly monopolies) has generally proved incapable of providing. Also, I have no issues against providing for subsidies for the "deserving", particularly if it is done efficiently through the cash transfer (Aadhaar) route. But here, "the bill plans to distribute grain to two thirds of India’s population at a 90 per cent subsidy costing over Rs 1,00,000 crores", which, on top of the mammoth allocations for the various schemes already in place, is going to starve funds required for the country's productive activity.
You need to generate wealth before you can get down to distributing it. If you do it the other way, and in addition stifle all economic activity, you are heading for plain trouble. That's in essence what Gurcharan Das is saying.
three highly readable articles on similar lines
murali772 - 11 April, 2013 - 07:29
1) Thatcher demolished the two conservative pillars of British society: the labour unions that held the parliamentary Labour Party in bondage, and the upper-class Tory leaders who resembled the benign but hapless relics of 'Downton Abbey'. It's hard to say which side was more hidebound and resistant to change, the unions or the aristocrats. They were unwitting partners in Britain's paralysis.
For the full text of the essay by Mr David Ignatius (who writes for the Washington Post), in the ToI, click here
2) It is time that the United Progressive Alliance did some serious soul-searching and reconsidered its approach to converting every social and economic goal into a right. I sometimes joke that the willingness with which the government has been obliging vocal NGOs might soon bring us a legal right to happiness.
It is not an accident that the founding fathers placed economic and social goals such as those relating to education and health in the directive principles rather than fundamental rights. Rights such as the freedom of speech and religion and equality before law regardless of race, religion, caste and gender, originally recognised as fundamental rights, were "negative" rights that courts could enforce through "writs" when the state violated them. In contrast, economic and social rights require "positive" action by the state, which the courts cannot readily enforce.
The founding fathers also understood that unlike what they classified as fundamental rights, economic and social rights were not absolute and would vary over time and space. The minimum acceptable healthcare today may turn unacceptable tomorrow and what is acceptable to Bihar may not be acceptable to Kerala.
Creating fundamental rights that the government neither intends to enforce nor has wherewithal for undermines the respect for the original fundamental rights and makes a mockery of the Constitution.
For the full text of the essay by Prof Arvind Panagariya in the ToI, click here
3) What Indians across the political and class spectrum need and deserve is empowerment, not crippling entitlement.
For the full text of the essay by noted columnist, Shankkar Aiyar, in the New Indian Express, click here
murali772 - 30 April, 2013 - 05:45
Nordic countries have become synonymous with the march of the welfare state. They also routinely top indices of both economic and social health. So from India and China to the US, policy documents justifying the expansion of the state's role in employment, education, health et al routinely quote examples from Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland. But it's been little noticed how the Nordics have been making a seismic shift away from tax-and-spend to leaner governments - trying to balance their books and encourage competitiveness.
murali772 - 31 March, 2013 - 06:39
Simultaneously, following are the excerpts from an essay by the Congress minister, Mr Shashi Tharoor (the full text may be accessed here).
Self-reliance” guaranteed both political freedom and freedom from economic exploitation. The result was that for most of the first five decades after independence, India, despite the best of intentions, pursued an economic policy of subsidizing unproductivity, regulating stagnation, and redistributing poverty. We called this socialism.
Indian-style socialism was a compound of nationalism and idealism. It embodied the conviction that goods and services vital to Indians’ economic well-being must remain in Indian hands – and not in the hands of Indians seeking to profit from producing and selling such goods and services, but rather in the disinterested hands of the state, the father and mother to all Indians.
Given this mindset, performance was not a relevant criterion for judging the utility of the public sector. Inefficiencies were masked by generous subsidies from the national treasury, and a combination of vested interests – socialist ideologues, bureaucratic managers, trade unions, and monopolies – kept it beyond political criticism.
The “permit-license-quota” culture of statist socialism allowed politicians and bureaucrats to use public service as a vehicle for private gratification, giving birth to a culture of corruption that still persists. India’s misfortune, in the economist Jagdish Bhagwati’s famous aphorism, was to be afflicted with brilliant economists. Add to that clamorous politicians and growing demands on a national economic pie that decades of protectionism prevented from growing.
Of course, Shashi Tharoor will say that it his personal opinion, and not the collective opinion of the UPA. What is essentially happening is that, while there are a whole bunch of right-thinking Congressmen, they just seem to be unable to carry their convictions to the electoral battle. And, this is not confined just to the Congress party alone. I wonder when we will start seeing an alignment of "politically correct-ism" and "correctly correct-ism".
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