[Reader-list] Articles on Right to Food

[Rakesh Iyer]

Dear all

Having been inspired by Taha jee's constant articles on the UID, I have
thought that we also need to pass on articles on other issues as well. And
therefore, I have decided to post articles on the Right to Food, an
important issue which needs to be looked at. This issue is important for
people of all religions as well, so unlike say the UID, it won't have a bias
too. And plus of course, it's something which needs to be looked at
seriously for the huge no. of poor people in this country.

To begin with, I post this article from livemint.com, which talks about how
we can tackle India's hunger. I think it would be of great use for us to
understand this issue, for it really gives them freedom from hunger, and
makes it an entitlement for them. Combined with NREGA and RTI, it would be
nothing short of revolutionary to achieve them. And as Pawan ji's status msg
always says: 'The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You
have to make it fall'. And efforts are being made to fall the apple.

Regards

Rakesh

Link:
http://www.livemint.com/2009/07/02205358/How-to-tackle-India8217s-hu.html
How to tackle India’s hunger
As India starts legislating on food security, there is much it could learn
from laws and practices abroad
 Biraj Patnaik


The manifesto of the Congress party promised the enactment of a Right to
Food Act, if the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was voted back to power.
A preliminary shape of such an Act has emerged in what was reported in the
media as the very first letter from Congress president Sonia Gandhi to Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh. The UPA government hopes to repeat through the
passage of this Act what it had achieved during its last term through the
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA)—a vision for more inclusive
governance.

[image: Indranil Bhoumik / Mint]

Indranil Bhoumik / Mint

At the heart of the idea of the right to food is a very simple premise. That
no citizen of a country should go hungry, and that each citizen should at
all times have physical access to, or the means to acquire, adequate
nutritious food. It is time India delivered on this.

Few countries in the world can claim to have achieved this fully, and, till
recently, fewer still have legislated it. The reasons for this are not
difficult to comprehend. Only a handful of developed countries have the
resources and the social commitment to welfarism to make this happen.

Some countries, such as the US, which actually have the resources to achieve
the goal of a country free from hunger, do not legislate it. To them, such
socio-economic rights are seen as a throwback to the Cold War, when the
international debates between the socialist block and the US were on the
superiority of civil and political rights over socio-economic rights.

But the idea of nation states guaranteeing citizens the right to food is not
a new one. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted
by all United Nations member states in 1948, lists among a state’s
obligation the right to food.

Closer home, article 21 of the Constitution, which provides a fundamental
right to life and personal liberty, has been repeatedly interpreted by the
Supreme Court as enshrining within it the right to food. Article 47 obliges
the Indian state to raise the standard of nutrition of its people.

Despite this, India continues to have one of the worst track records
globally, as far as the commitment to tackle hunger and malnutrition is
concerned. The last round of the National Family Health Survey in 2006
confirmed that the child malnutrition rate in India is 46%, almost double
that of sub-Saharan Africa. India, the world’s second fastest growing
economy, ranks 66th among the 88 countries surveyed by the International
Food Policy Research Institute (Ifpri) in the Global Hunger Index (2008),
below Sudan, Nigeria and Cameroon, and slightly above Bangladesh.

Yet, India has also seen some of the most remarkable judicial activism
anywhere in the world on the right to food. The landmark *PUCL v. Union of
India and others (2001)* case, better known as the right to food case, has
seen at least 60 orders over the last eight years, and has emerged as the
longest continuing mandamus—a legal writ where the court orders a person or
entity to do something—in the world on the right to food. Somehow, until
recently, this judicial activism hasn’t translated into legislation. Now is
the opportunity for India to deliver—and learn from similar legislation
abroad.

Over the last few years, there has been a slew of legislation across the
world which recognize the right to food as a fundamental right and provide
state guarantees.

South Africa was among the first countries in the world to explicitly
guarantee the right to food in its constitution through its Bill of rights.
The Brazilian constitution in 1998 introduced a minimum wage to meet basic
needs, including food; the constitution was further modified in 2003 to
introduce the concept of social rights for every citizen, including the
right to food. This process culminated in Brazil’s Nutritional Security
Framework Law (Losan) in 2006, which created a set of institutions for
monitoring the right to food, and is likely to be the most lasting legacy of
President Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva. Article 16 of the Bolivian constitution
explicitly states, “Every person has the right to water and food. The State
has the obligation to guarantee food security for all through healthy,
adequate and sufficient food.” Even Belarus and Moldova have clear
constitutional guarantees on the right to food.

Argentina (2003) and Guatemala (2005) were the first South American
countries to introduce framework laws on food security, closely followed by
Ecuador (2006) and Venezuela (2008).

South Africa, Honduras, Peru, Nicaragua and Uganda have already drafted
right to food legislation that is being actively considered by their
respective cabinets and parliaments.

So what are the key lessons India can learn from this rich range of
international experience on right to food legislation and the practice they
have been put to?

The first key lesson is that of political commitment of the leadership to
the idea of right to food. A case in point would be a comparison between
South Africa and Brazil. While South Africa guaranteed the right to food in
its constitution in 1996 through a Bill of rights, the absence of political
will to turn this into reality means that millions of South Africans
continue their daily encounter with hunger. In stark contrast, the
determination of the Brazilian president to eliminate hunger was evident in
his inaugural speech when he announced the “*Fome* Zero”, or “Zero Hunger”,
programme. “We will make it possible for people in our country to eat three
square meals a day, every day, with no need for hand-outs from anyone.” It
is this unambiguous commitment that continues to be at the heart of Brazil’s
battle against hunger.

The second key lesson is convergence. The right to food cuts across
programmes of many sectors—including health, nutrition, agriculture,
livelihoods, and labour. This means that in any context, at least a dozen
ministries will be operating programmes that have some impact on the right.
Converging all of these under a central leadership is critical. Brazil
converged as many as 31 programmes which are now overseen by the ministry of
food security and combating hunger. In the context of India, nine programmes
run by five ministries, along with agencies such as the Food Corporation of
India, are the respondents in the right to food case before the Supreme
Court. It is imperative that our proposed legislation brings together all
these programmes on a single converged platform. The state government of
Delhi is currently undertaking a “Mission Convergence” with precisely this
objective in mind.

The third key lesson is creating a system of not just administrative, but
also legal recourse. This is a key feature of the right to food Acts across
countries. In Brazil, the public prosecutors’ office take up violations of
human rights, including socio-economic rights, at the local level.
Guatemala, Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Uganda and South Africa have already put
in place or proposed powerful national commissions that act as oversight
bodies and also have the power to impose penalties. Although the Supreme
Court has appointed its own commissioners to monitor the food and employment
schemes of the Indian government, these commissioners do not have the kind
of statutory powers to impose penalties that the bodies in other countries
do.

The fourth key lesson is the involvement of civil society. All countries
which have legislated the right to food have involved civil society
organizations, not just in local structures, but also in the national-level
oversight bodies. Consea, the Brazilian council that oversees the
implementation of the right to food, has as many as 38 civil society
representatives. It is important that this engagement is not just in letter,
but also in spirit, with governments taking civil society as seriously as it
does its own bureaucracy and legislature. Most other countries have also
involved civil society in the process of formulating their right to food
legislation.

Lastly, the key to the success of right to food legislation has been
flexibility and innovation. Uganda has proposed including the “head of the
household” as a duty bearer, with penalties—including fines and
imprisonment—imposed for non-fulfilment of right to food obligations within
the family. While this may not be a desirable innovation for India, it is
specific to the national context there. Venezuela, Guatemala and Ecuador
have a strong component of food sovereignty, with strong safeguards against
genetically modified foods.

The right to food Acts legislated globally are not only leading to stronger
legal safeguards for poor and marginalized people, they are also translating
into other policies and programmes. These include canteens in urban areas
for the poor that serve cooked food at subsidized prices, cash transfer
schemes, school meals, supplementary nutrition for infants, minimum food
guarantees for labour and social security pensions.

While there is a lot that India can learn from the global experience, it can
also contribute uniquely to the international discourse on legislation on
the right to food. Most of the laws mentioned above are framework pieces of
legislation which define the broad parameters of the right to food. The
Supreme Court has already established very detailed individual entitlements
that are legally binding on the government. These include universal mid-day
meals to every child studying in a government-run or aided primary school,
nutrition, health and preschool education services through the Integrated
Child Development Services for every child under the age of 6, subsidized
grain to households living below the poverty line and monthly pensions for
old people living below the poverty line.

A Right to Food Act that weaves these legally binding entitlements into the
text and spirit of the law will set a unique precedent globally. Are our
lawmakers ready to take on this challenge?


*Biraj Patnaik is principal adviser to the Supreme Court commissioners on
the right to food. He has been actively involved in the Right to Food
Campaign in India. The views expressed in this article are his own. Comments
are welcome at theirview at livemint.com*