Jean Dreze, noted development economist who played a stellar role in formulating the national rural employment guarantee law in the previous UPA government and was made a member of the reconstituted National Advisory Council, is furious with the apex advisory body’s formulations on the food security bill.

He says the NAC missed a good chance to take radical initiatives to address hunger and malnutrition and that its final set of recommendations are nothing but “more of the same”.

Here we re-produce the entire text of his dissent note to the NAC’s final recommendations on the food security law:

“Four months have passed since the National Advisory Council began work on the proposed National Food Security Act. Many NAC members have a strong commitment to this issue and worked hard to frame the Council’s food security proposals. Unfortunately, the NAC seems to be expected to work within constraints imposed by the government that do not leave scope for anything like what is required to address the problem of hunger and undernutrition in an effective manner. The final NFSA
proposals are very disappointing and, on this matter, the NAC has failed in its basic purpose of imparting a new vision to social policy
in India.

“The NAC began its deliberations on a visionary note but later came under a lot of pressure to accommodate constraints imposed by the
government. The final result is a minimalist proposal that misses many important elements of food security.

“The PDS framework is very fragmented and fails to abolish the artificial and divisive distinction between APL and BPL households. It
takes on board food procurement limits that reflect the government’s reluctance to expand the PDS more than objective constraints.

“The non-PDS entitlements, for their part, have been diluted beyond recognition. Entire fields of intervention that are crucial for food
security (such as child development services and old age pensions) have been left out of the final proposals.

“An opportunity has been missed to initiate a radical departure in this field. The NAC proposals are a great victory for the government – they allow it to appear to be doing something radical for food security, but it is actually “more of the same”.”