After three flip-flops within a month, the government has finally gone ahead with the ordinance route for the food security bill. More than anything else, it is this hurry which reveals the political opportunism behind this otherwise welcome legislation.

The cabinet note on “justification for ordinance” says the bill, promised in the president’s speech at the beginning of the UPA II regime, could not be passed because of repeated adjournments, which is true. However, after the last session, there was talk of convening a special session to pass this bill and the main opposition BJP had said it was willing to consider it. There is no justification, in that note or elsewhere, what was the hurry to launch such an ambitious programme without a debate on the floor of the house.

If anything, there were differences right within the cabinet itself and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar was till last month reluctant to back what is the biggest policy move from UPA since MNREGS. Yes, the parliamentary standing committee has gone through the bill at length and suggested changes, yet it should be a matter embarrassment somewhere that a benign welfare programme of global proportions is being ushered in without a parliamentary debate.

And it remains to be seen if the government will be able to muster the numbers to ratify it in the next session, which by the way is not far away.

So, why the hurry? One possible reason, as argued also for the announcement of the controversial gas pricing policy [read more here] is that the political situation is quite fluid, general elections can come earlier than May-June 2014, and the government does not want to take any chances with a vote winner like food security, lest the code of conduct come up suddenly.