New Delhi: Budget 2023-24 has continued the trend of reduced spending on the social sector despite the ongoing economic crisis, which hit the country before the COVID-19 pandemic and has impacted those at the bottom of the pyramid the most, the Right to Food Campaign has charged. The Campaign, which is a collective of activists working in the field of food security, said the Government of India has massively reduced the allocation for major social security schemes.
It said while the need of the hour was to continue with the additional foodgrains being provided under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY) and to expand the Public Distribution System to include non-ration card holders and also distribute pulses and oils, the Budget has actually reduced the food subsidy allocation by over Rs 89,000 crore. As for the Rs 1.97 lakh crore that has been allocated, it said, this was barely enough to meet the requirements of the regular entitlements under the National Food Security Act (NFSA).
Addressing the media at the Press Club of India on Monday, campaign member and economist Dipa Sinha said that the Union government’s decision will result in reducing the ration entitlement of 81 crore people by 50%. She said ration cardholders were getting 10 kg of cereals per person per month since April 2020. With PMGKAY’s discontinuation from January 1, 2023, the ration entitlement of people has been halved and they are now entitled to only 5 kg ration per person per month as per the normal NFSA entitlement – instead of the 10 kg ration per person under NFSA plus PMGKAY.
Another member Anjali Bhardwaj, who is also a founder of Satark Nagrik Sangathan, said while on the one hand ration entitlements have been halved, on the other hand, there is no provision for food security for those without ration cards in the budget. “The coverage under NFSA in terms of the number of the people entitled to have ration cards was determined on the basis of the 2011 census and was to be increased after the next census of 2021,” she said, adding that the government has, however, not undertaken the census on the pretext of COVID-19 though all other activities are fully underway.
An employee inspects a godown of Food Corporation of India (FCI) where rice bags are being stored in Srinagar, April 14, 2020. Photo: PTI /S. Irfan
Bhardwaj said the Supreme Court had in the migrant workers’ case also directed the government to re-determine coverage under NFSA and later on in July 2022, stated that if the census is not underway then the government should use the official population projections and increase the coverage as more than 10 crore people are being left out due to adherence to the 2011 census. She lamented that the government has still not increased the coverage.
During the last hearing of the case on January 31, Bhardwaj said, the apex court directed the government to verify how many of the 28.55 crore people registered on the eShram portal have ration cards. The court held that mere registration was not enough and that the purpose of registration was to ensure that people get the benefit of welfare schemes and programmes.
General secretary of the National Federation of Indian Women and another campaign member Annie Raja said while the Union government was good at coming up with names and acronyms for welfare schemes, the benefits of these to the women and children were especially poor. Giving the example of the Ujjwala scheme, she said, though the government gave gas cylinders, it soon began increasing the price of gas which made refills prohibitively expensive for most households.
Stating that the Budget did not reflect the challenges being faced by the women, Raja said the total budget for the Women and Child Development Ministry was just 0.1% of the GDP. Also, she said, the budgets for Mid-Day Meal (MDM) and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) schemes have steadily declined in real terms.
Raja also flagged how the Central allocation for social security pensions, Samarthya (including maternity entitlement schemes), LPG subsidies, old age pension scheme, and widow and disability pension scheme remained grossly inadequate.
Also Read: Paltry Budget Allocations to Women’s Schemes Belie Government’s Tall Promises
Social activist Nikhil Dey spoke about how the allocation for National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) was an “assault on the peoples’ right to work” as mandated under the Act. He said while Rs 1.24 lakh crore was required just to give assured 40 days of work to all the active job cardholders this year, the actual allocation in the Budget meant in real terms that only about 20 days of work would be guaranteed.
The unprecedented Budget cut, he cautioned, will lead to massive delays in wage payments, suppression of work demand, and lack of quality assets getting created.
On the Government of India issuing a statement that MGNREGP is a demand-based scheme and therefore the budget can be revised later, Dey said “such assurances ring hollow”. This is so, he said, because “the government has failed to make full additional allocations even through the revised estimates”.
Citing the case of last fiscal, he said, “as against the additional demand of Rs 25,000 crore that was made in November, the government only made a provision for Rs 16,000 crore through the RE.”Moreover, for West Bengal, which accounts for 10% of the workers, he said, the scheme has not been provided with any funds through the Budget for over a year.
As such, the Right to Food Campaign charged that “the Union Budget 2023 is completely unresponsive to the needs of the majority of the people who are still struggling to earn a decent livelihood and is biased towards reviving the economy for the big corporates.”