The proposed food security law is giving finance minister Pranab Mukherjee sleepless nights. Feeding the country should present no small bill, and it is understandable that the man feels a bit daunted. But that shouldn't be the concern, ideally. Given that the subsidy bill is still far lesser than the tax holidays and subsidies given to the super-rich corporate, all in the name of encouraging investment and promoting growth, UPA can actually stop whining about inflated welfare and consumer subsidies. All it needs to do is rationalise — give subsidy where it is needed (to the hungry and the illiterate) and slash it where it isn't (no prizes for guessing).

So, what should really be giving the finance minister some sleep-robbing heartburn? The food security bill itself. It is no one's case that the poor shouldn't get food entitlements, but trying it out with what we already have seems to be the worst idea. With our leaky public distribution system (PDS), good money (nearly Rs 1 lakh crore) will be spent in the name of those who need the grains and they will still be waiting for the trickle they receive in ration shops. Even Sharad Pawar, no friend of the poor, agrees. The agriculture minister has been objecting to the bill reasoning that, apart from other things, PDS needs to be fixed before we can even talk of universalising the right to food.

The bill's current form, which is a hotchpotch agreement between the government naysayers and the national advisory council's (NAC) NGO proponents, talks of too complicated an implementation route. With the government machinery being unintuitive (not its own fault, though) and stiff, chances are the bill will go haywire once it is on the ground. So, the law may never become a secure right. So, will it be a wisest thing to sink Rs 1 lakh crore — even if the government had it, as opposed to what it claims — on something so half-baked?

That the bill is meant to be a populist measure for the Congress party is evident from the fact that there are scores of other welfare schemes in the country which are poorly implemented but always extolled around the polls. Some have even argued that the Mahtama Gandhi national rural employment guarantee scheme was one of the strongest poll planks in the last elections.

With the budget presentation just day away, nobody will fault Mukherjee some sympathy over his sleep deficit. But the minister must understand that the reasons he cites for all that tossing and turning will convince no one.