The simmering anger among members of the council, who have also spearheaded the Right-to-Food campaign, had been palpable over the past four months with the government wanting to keep the Bill (and its subsidy burden) at its minimal and the activist-members recommending an expansive scheme, which did away with the artificially low official poverty levels and provided more nutrition services than just foodgrains.
The Plan panel and its member in the NAC Narendra Jadhav had right from the outset promoted the `least-burden’ option. The panel in its internal notes had even suggested that the prices of grains provided to those above the poverty line be kept so high as to dissuade people from buying the stuff even as the UPA publicly gave them the option to do so.
The government had also opposed attempts to turn any of the existing nutrition schemes into legal entitlements under the proposed statuette.
While the battle was evenly fought for a couple of months, the tide turned against the NAC members when the Congress chief, too, asked the NAC to go back on their earlier recommendations and find consonance with the government. This forced — what had been sold as the planning commission of social sector or the super cabinet of the UPA — to play second fiddle to the section of the government with which many NAC members have had serious differences.
At the final stages of the negotiations, the Plan panel and others in the government seeking to keep the food security Bill within an iron fence of ‘fiscal prudence’ gained a clear upper hand, thanks to the PMO’s intervention. The NAC could not even convince the UPA to bring into law the legal entitlements already provided by the Supreme Court despite two apex court commissioners on food — N C Saxena and Harsh Mander — being part of the council.
The Supreme Court, advised by the two, had already ordered that the old age pension scheme, which was knocked off at the last moment in an intervention by the PMO and the mandatory 35-kg foodgrain per month, which was whittled down to 25 kg for APL consumers. On Saturday, this led members like Jean Dreze to openly show dissent while others expressed their disappointment during the meeting, and some even did outside, albeit, anonymously.