Budget 2014: BJP following Chidu's policy of neglect, says Right to Food activists

New Delhi: Questioning Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s ‘silence’ on the National Food Security Act in his Budget speech, members of the Right To Food Campaign accused the Narendra Modi government of going back on its election promise of ‘universal food security’ and of failing to commit sufficient funds to implement the Act across the country.

The Budget, said Right to Food activists, had given them “no reason for optimism.”

“What is most disconcerting is that the BJP is following the same policy of benign neglect that Mr Chidambaram in his last two Budgets had done. Please remember, there were massive social security cuts in the last two Budgets. We had hoped that this policy of killing the social sector programme by bleeding it with a thousand cuts would not be followed by Mr Jaitley. Unfortunately, there is no reason for optimism from this Budget,” said Biraj Patnaik, food policy expert and member of the Right to Food Campaign (RTFC).

Jaitley’s decision to raise budgetary allocation for food subsidy to Rs 1.15 lakh crore (compared to Rs 92,000 in the last financial year) doesn’t seem to won him any friends in the RTFC. Bringing up the Rs 1.32 lakh crore estimate of food subsidy component of the Act made by previous government, Kavita Srivastava, convenor of the RTFC said, “Even the minimalistic National Food Security Act passed by the UPA requires Rs 1.32 lakh crore. This Budget makes an allocation of Rs 1.15 lakh crore for food subsidy, which although higher than the food subsidy of last year, is nowhere close to what is required to implement the Act across the country. It still falls short of Rs 17,000 crore.”

Pulling up the BJP and senior leaders of the party, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi of ‘double speak’, the RTFC drew attention to Modi’s letter, as Gujarat Chief Minister to then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, on the need to increase entitlements under the Act and to strengthen it.

“The critique of the Act that the BJP had posed to the UPA has gone completely unaddressed. There was complete silence in the speech of Arun Jaitley on how they would strengthen the National Food Security Act,” said Srivastava.

Members of the RTFC also questioned the Budget’s silence on the maternity entitlement of Rs 6000 per month provided for under the Act.

“A very significant step taken in the National Food Security Act was the provision for maternity benefits of Rs 6000. This, for the first time, recognised that women work and that when they have to take off because of pregnancy, they have to be compensated. Again, there is no allocation in the Budget for this. And so even though it is in the Act, no woman is going to benefit from it in reality,” said Dipa Sinha, economist and member of the RTFC.

The RTFC also came down heavily on the Finance Minister for not increasing the budgetary allocation for the mid-day meal scheme and the integrated child development services scheme.

“With food inflation reaching double digits, it’s also unjustified how the per child per day allocation for supplementary nutrition and mid-day meals, legal entitlements under the NFSA for which the government is yet to notify rules, do not see any increase,” the RTFC said in a statement.