Food as an electoral weapon

Sunil Gatade
Political parties are not exactly social welfare organizations and leaders are no saints. The parties are in the business of power and whatever they may say or do is aimed at either gaining power or consolidating their hold over it.
The passage of the Food Security Bill by Parliament at the insistence of Sonia Gandhi is also with the aim of keeping an eye on the next Lok Sabha elections.
Gandhi knows well the gut reaction of the aam aadmi to such acts, having lorded over the UPA for the past ten years in which the BJP remained away from power.
It must be understood that Gandhi has unveiled the Food weapon when BJP is trying to get its together ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.
In fact, under Gandhi’s leadership, Congress plans to go to town on the Food Security and Land Acquisition bills with the message that the Congress chief is taking forward the “Garibi hatao” plank championed by Indira Gandhi.
The two bills are seen by the ruling party as a “game changer” in the general elections. A Congress Chief Minister remarked that Sonia Gandhi is trying to fulfil the unfinished task of “Garibi Hatao” undertaken by Indira Gandhi by working for ending the hunger and malnutrition among the poor and downtrodden.
The refrain of party leaders is that the Food Security and Land Acquisition bills are two landmark initiatives taken by the UPA government, and have no parallels in history.
They insist that it is for the first time in country’s history that the poor will enjoy the right to highly subsidised food, and nobody will sleep hungry any more.
A quick look at post-independent India shows that the promise of cheap food has worked wonders in several states.
In 1967, the DMK, in its state assembly manifesto, promised three measures of rice at Re 1 (a measure was approximately equal to 1.5 kg). This promise came at a time when the country was facing severe food shortages.
As political observers have pointed out that riding on that one promise, supported by the sentiments fostered by the anti-Hindi agitation two years earlier, the DMK dislodged the Congress permanently from power in the state.
Since then, the two Dravidian parties have assiduously injected liberal doses of freebies, either in their election manifestos or during their tenure in government.
Upbeat after her gaining power in Tamil Nadu sometime back, AIADMK Supremo and Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has now unleashed another food weapon. She has embarked on starting Amma Canteens, giving Idli, Dosa and meals at very cheap rates. She is raring to face the Lok Sabha polls.
The situation is not different in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Immediately after taking oath as Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister in 2009, the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy signed two files related to free electricity supply and low price rice – the two poll promises of the Congress.
After Governor N.D. Tiwari administered him the oath , YSR inked the two files amid thunderous applause by thousands of his supporters.
The files related to increasing the duration of free electricity to farmers from seven to nine hours a day and hiking the quantity of Rs.2-a-kg rice from 25 to 30 kg for each Below Poverty Line (BPL) family a month.
Mentioning his father, the late Y S Rajasekhara Reddy’s schemes, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, who has parted ways with Congress, says his YSR party would bring all the schemes to the doorstep of the downtrodden once it comes to power in the state.
Stating that he has seen poverty from very close quarters during his recent Odarpu yatras, “YSR had granted 20 kgs and wanted to provide 30 kgs. But fate took him away. We would certainly give 30 kgs of rice to each poor family,” says Reddy Jr in his new avatar as poor man’s saviour.
In fact, providing rice at subsidised rates has been at the centre of Andhra politics since 1983, when popular actor NT Rama Rao came to power.
His promise of Rs 2 per kg rice helped him end Congress monopoly in the state. When the TDP came to power in 1995, N Chandrababu Naidu increased the price from Rs 2 to Rs 3.50 per kg, which was further raised by the YSR Government to Rs 5.25 in 2004.
In 2008, as many as six states saw parties promising, or governments giving, subsidised grain to the poor. The year began with the Chhattisgarh government introducing a scheme of 35 kg of rice at Rs 3 per kg for families below the poverty line (BPL). In April, the Madhya Pradesh government followed suit, announcing 20 kg of wheat at Rs 3 per kg or 20 kg of rice at Rs 4.5 per kg for the poor.
In the same month, the Andhra Pradesh government launched a Rs 2 per kg of rice scheme for BPL families and in neighbouring Karnataka the BJP made a similar promise a key plank in its election manifesto. In August, Naveen Patnaik in Orissa also declared that the state would provide 25 kg of rice at Rs 2 per kg to BPL families and also to those above the poverty line in the districts of Kalahandi, Bolangir and Koraput.
Earlier, M Karunanidhi the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu chose the occasion of birth centenary of C Annadurai to announce that all ration card holders would be given rice at Re 1 per kg, Tamil Nadu having introduced a 2-rupee scheme in 2006 in fulfilling a promise made by the DMK Keen observers of the political scene insist that history suggests that every time one party promises something like this, the opponents follow suit, but the first one to make the promise seems to have a first-mover advantage.
The UPA will be hoping that is indeed the case. The promise of cheap foodgrains to such a vast population has been made for the first time. The next Lok Sabha election is a test case of the political impact of the rollout of food security—and if it succeeds, it will change the electoral politics forever.

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