The Indian Congress Party is pushing the National Food Security Act"

The Indian Congress Party introduced a National Food Security Bill to Parliament on March 22 ". If the bill is passed, it will provide the 0.81 billion people with food far below the cost price. This will not only alleviate the food shortage problem of the poor to a large extent, but also 70% of Indian citizens will benefit from the bill.

For India, a vast emerging country, the problem of food and clothing is still an urgent problem related to the livelihood of hundreds of millions of poor people. According to the census of India, its total population has exceeded 1.2 billion, and the overall size of the population continues to expand. However, about 42 per cent of these 1.2 billion people are poor and are still suffering from the problem of food and clothing. There are more than 1 billion poor people in the world, and India has more than 0.4 billion poor people, accounting for about 1/4, ranking first in the world.

At the critical juncture when the general election in May 2014 is approaching, the National Food Security Act launched by the Congress Party is undoubtedly of great political significance. According to this bill, the Indian government will expand the scope and intensity of relief to the poor, and provide food far below the cost price to the 0.81 billion people, while currently only providing relief to the poorest 0.318 billion people. This means that the Indian government needs to spend a huge sum of US $23 billion (about 141.3 billion yuan) every year, which will increase India's annual food allowance by 45% and use more than 1/3 of India's annual grain production. How to raise the huge amount of money needed for the cheap food program will be a huge problem for the Indian government.

Even if the bill is finally passed, it is necessary to pay attention to the problems that may occur in the implementation process. In particular, corruption in the Indian government is very serious. According to the World Bank, more than half of India's past relief funds for the poor have been lost to a bloated, corrupt distribution system. Therefore, how to take practical measures to ensure that "special funds are earmarked" so that the poor who really do not have enough to fill their stomachs rather than the "moths" of those countries will benefit from the bill has become a practical problem that the Indian government needs to think about and solve.

http://kafila.org/2013/03/24/a-summary-of-the-national-food-security-bill/

(Responsible editor: Shixin)