Some Important Programmes in Livelihoods: Searching for Focus?
49
12
The National Food Security Act (NFSA) 2013.
Challenges, Buffer Stocking and the Way Forward,
Working Paper 297, by Shweta Saini and Ashok Gulati,
ICRIER 2015.
would ensure that people get support for
food security and that delivery of financial
means is done without extraordinary casts,
thus fully avoiding leakages. The working
paper concludes that
trying to achieve an equity objective (extend-
ing economic access to food for the poor)
by using a price policy instrument is also
inconsistent with the basics of economics.
The answer going forward lies in substituting
the present system of physically distributing
grains with conditional/unconditional cash
transfers.
12
As in the case of NREGS, fulfilling
the legislative mandate of ensuring food
security to the defined target population
might be beyond the fiscal capacity of the
government. The target of food security
programme should be more sharply defined
on well laid out criteria that establish the
need. As the ICRIER paper argues, provid-
ing cash or food coupons might be a better
way of enabling the target households to
become food secure. Engaging in physical
supply of food under NFSAwill be expensive
and wasteful.
The reviewofmajor programmes in liveli-
hood space establishes that while progress is
being made, there is a considerable scope to
improve (Annexure 3.1). The programmes
require a clearer vision of the results to be
achieved and look for alternative means for
achieving it, given the emerging context of
technology-based service delivery systems.
The very limited collaborationwith voluntary
and private sectors in all these programmes
is difficult to understand. While voluntary
sector understands grass root delivery of
services, private sector can bring technol-
ogy and cost efficiencies. A critical aspect of
both NREGS and NFSA is that the intended
coverage is ambitious while the public
finances are not in a position to fund the
entire extent of expenditure required to fulfil
the parliamentary mandate. Rethinking on
how to creatively deal with the government’s
responsibility is badly needed. As for the two
Livelihoods Mission, it is time for them to
begin focussing on livelihoods.
