Amartya Sen bats for universal food coverage

Questions current growth vision when 40 percent children are malnourished

prasanna

Prasanna Mohanty | February 16, 2013


Nobel laureate Amartya Sen
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen

Batting for universal coverage of food entitlement, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen called for strengthening the draft food security bill, particularly the provisions relating to children’s entitlement. He said the supreme court orders on mid-day meals and integrated child development services (ICDS) had made important contribution to the health and nutrition of children. The bill, he felt, should not dilute these entitlements in any way.

He was speaking at a seminar on ‘hunger and nutrition: time to act’ organised at the Delhi IIT on Friday.

Sen said meeting the needs of malnourishments in children was not only important from the point of social justice but also to generate long-term growth and development. He drew attention to the fact “with one-third illiteracy, one-half without toilets, one-third with no electricity, 40 percent of children being under-nourished” India needed to review if any increase in growth rate was sustainable at all.

In fact, he recalled how at the time of independence the principles of free and universal provision of essential health, education and nutrition were part of the country’s vision and how we need to revive that now.

He counted three benefits of universal coverage of health, education and nutrition. First, it makes these facilities a matter of citizens’ right, and avoids any exclusion. Second, it ensures that powerful and influential people have a stake in them. Third, universal coverage helps to avoid corruption.

Saying that the tabling of food security bill in parliament was an achievement in itself Sen said it must be pushed sensibly, keeping in mind where cash transfers would work and where not. It was in reference to some states demanding cash transfer instead of food supply to the poor and malnourished population.

In the meanwhile, the food security bill has been sent back to the drawing board after several state governments opposed to some of the key elements of the bill. These objections related to uniform criteria of selecting beneficiaries, putting an arbitrary limit on the number of beneficiaries in rural (75 percent) and urban (50 percent) and the financial burden the extended coverage would put on some of the badly performing and poor states.

Comments

 

Other News

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Record production of rice, wheat, and sugarcane estimated

The foodgrain production of 3305.34 lakh tonnes is estimated in the current agricultural year 2022-23 – higher by 149.18 LMT as compared to the previous year, according to the Third Advance Estimates of production of major crops released by the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

India`s ‘AIRAWAT’ ranks 75th in top 500 Supercomputing List

The AI Supercomputer ‘AIRAWAT’, installed at C-DAC, Pune, has been ranked 75th in the world. It was declared so in the 61st edition of Top 500 Global Supercomputing List on Tuesday at the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC 2023) in Germany. It puts India on top of AI S

Ocean Dialogue a great opportunity for G20 members

The ongoing third Environment and Climate Sustainability Working Group G20 meeting (May 21-23) has focused on three aspects: land degradation and reclamation of mining areas, Blue Economy and sustainable ocean management and resource sufficiency and circular economy. Leena Nandan, secretary,

Semi hi-speed trains, buses could be primary alternative to cars

We are not paying sufficient attention to the rapidly growing oil imports (from pre-Covid-19 to post-Covid, in 2022). They surged from 102 million tons (MT) in 2019-20 to 168 MT in 2022-23, an increase of 68%.   India is the largest importer of oil in the world, and, at current rate, we

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter