Slum-dwellers send postcards to Sonia Gandhi on food security bill
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COMMENTS 
The postcard campaign follows reports that the food security Bill that is awaiting passage in Parliament cuts the amount of foodgrain to be made available to below the poverty line families in the public distribution system and ignores above the poverty line families
Around 20,000 people from Mumbai’s slums have sent postcards to Congress Party president and chairman of the National Advisory Committee, Sonia Gandhi, urging her to guarantee 35 kg of foodgrain per month to above the poverty line (APL) families, in the pending Right to Food Security Bill.
The postcard campaign follows reports that the food security Bill that is awaiting passage in Parliament cuts the amount of foodgrain to be made available to below the poverty line (BPL) families in the public distribution system (PDS), and ignores above the poverty line families.
Volunteers of the Rationing Kruti Samiti (RKS), which monitors implementation of the PDS and schemes like the Employment Guarantee Scheme in Maharashtra, claim that self-help group workers have sent 5,000 postcards from Bhandup alone.
Ramlal Pal of Mariamma basti, in Worli, and a former mill worker, coordinated with 250 people in the basti to send postcards to Delhi. “We are sending postcards so that our request is taken into account before implementation of the Bill,” Pal said.
“Only 1% of ration card owners in Mumbai are BPL (earning less than Rs 15,000 per year). Nearly 80% are APL (earning between Rs 15,000 and Rs 1 lakh per year). But APL people figure nowhere in the Right to Food Security Bill,” said Gorakh Avhad, Maharashtra Coordinator, Rationing, Kruti Samiti, the driving force behind the postcard campaign.
The draft Bill has been criticised by members of the Right to Food Campaign for reducing the existing food entitlement. They warn that targeting minimum food entitlements will create food insecurity. ‘If people classified outside BPL lists express a need for subsidised food -- they clearly have a right to receive it as they need it for their sustenance,’ the campaign said in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in March 2010.
They urged the prime minister to ensure universal entitlement to food as the only way the country can ensure food security for all. ‘Every adult resident of the country must be covered by the PDS, with entitlements of 14. kg of cereals (including nutritious millets) per month at Rs 2 per kg, 1.5 kg of pulses at Rs 20 per kg, and 800 gm of cooking oil at Rs 35 per kg, with children getting half the entitlements and ration cards made out in the name of female heads of the household,’ the letter noted.
At a meeting with Union Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, on April 21, 2010, right to food campaigners said a more holistic approach should be followed given the high malnutrition rate in the country, spiralling prices of essential items, drought, and deepening hunger.
They rejected the idea of cash transfers for foodgrain and called for an immediate ban on food exports till malnutrition was banished from the country. They said the first call on all natural resources, including land and water, must be for food. All speculation and futures trading in food items should be banned.
Source: www.indianexpress.com, April 27, 2010
www.mynews.in, March 24, 2010
The Hindu, April 22, 2010