Food security breached for the most left-behind groups?

Aadhaar is no guarantee to get a ration card: study

pradeep-baisakh

Pradeep Baisakh | May 14, 2018


#NFSA   #National Food Security Act   #welfare schemes   #Aadhaar   #Wada Na Todo Abhiyan  


It took four years for Rahila Khan, a Muslim woman from Himachal Pradesh, to get a ration card after her husband passed away. She is a single woman who is entitled to the benefits of Antodoya Anna Yojana (35 kg of subsidised rice per household per month) under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). She had to make rounds in many offices and approached many people to get a card.

Saudamini from West Bengal (name changed) was married ten years ago and had a baby after two years of her marriage. The husband eventually sold her to someone in Delhi, but somehow she managed to go back to Kolkata. With no easy option of livelihood available for her, she ended up becoming a sex-worker. She has not got a ration card, as she is demanded to produce documentary proof of her residence and identity. But she has none.

During the recent release of the “Micro study on hunger and poverty among marginalized groups in India”, carried out by Wada Na Todo Abhiyan, a national campaign on governance and accountability, people from several vulnerable groups like the Muslim, women from urban slums, Musahars (Mahadalits in Bihar), sex-workers, migrants, Tribals etc. testified their plight of exclusion from the food security net. The study is done in context of the Leave No One Behind slogan under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Agenda 2030.

NFSA provides for distribution of subsidised ration covering 75 percent population in rural areas and 50 percent in urban areas. It also includes the provisions of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Mid-Day Meal (MDM) and at least Rs 6,000 for the pregnant and lactating women under the maternity benefit scheme.

In Manipur the situation is so different and alarming. Manipur is under the APFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act), which provides special powers to the army to prohibit large gathering and arrest without warrants etc. If there is any information of presence of any insurgents in a village, the army cordons the village and stops entry of ration to the area creating difficulties for the villagers. On the other, sometimes the insurgents come in large numbers, park in villages and demand cooked food from the villagers, which also drain their food stocks leaving in hunger.

Under the Loktak hydropower project in Manipur, Ithai barrage has been constructed on the Manipur river with Loktak lake being used as a reservoir. About 500 families living in around the lake have been denied any ration cards.  Attempts are being made by the government to displace them form the area to develop it as a tourist place.

In Delhi slums, there are several cases of fingerprints not matching during Aadhaar authentication leading to denial of ration. This is very common for the labourers as they are involved in manual work impacting on their fingerprints.

Musahar communities in Bihar are categorized as Mahadalits (dalits among dalits). They are also present in eastern UP. The knowledge about their precarious situation is widely known. Most of them stay as bonded agricultural labour in some local landlord’s house and are paid meagre wages for their work. They actually are forced to a state of perennial indebtedness by an extortive system and are often denied adequate food leading to malnutrition.

Suleman from the Munda tribal community in Jharkhand does not have a ration card. He sells wood collected from the forest to fetch rice from the market. MGNREGA could have been a lifesaver in his case, which has been marred due to long delays in payment.

In Mumbai, there are some unauthorized colonies, like Mulauniambujwadi near Malad, where the inhabitants have no electricity or water bills, therefore no Aadhaar or ration card for them!

Out of 653 households of most left behind groups studied, 600 have Aadhaar cards, but 300 do not have a ration card. This also shows that Aadhaar is also not a guarantee for getting a ration card as claimed by government. 

Three broad suggestions are made to bridge the gaps in implementation of NFSA. One, the requirement of documentary evidence providing a ration card should be made flexible. Two, Aadhaar should not be mandatorily linked to the ration entitlements. And three, the universalisation of food scheme is the need of the hours to remedy the exclusion of such marginalized groups from the food safety net.

Comments

 

Other News

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

Third G20 ECSWG meeting kicks off with mega beach clean-up on Sunday

The 3rd ECSWG (environment and climate sustainability working group) meeting is being held during May 21-23. The meeting is being kicked off with a G20 Mega Beach Clean-Up on Sunday in Mumbai at Juhu Beach from 7 AM for two hours. The main focus of this meeting will be on steering the discussions around Co

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