Sonia Gandhi seeks support for food bill

NEW DELHI: India’s ruling party chief Sonia Gandhi urged lawmakers Monday to support a new 18-billion-dollar scheme to provide cheap food to the poor, saying it would help banish hunger from the country.
After days of unruly scenes in Parliament, MPs finally agreed Monday to debate the Food Security Bill — a flagship scheme of Gandhi’s Congress party.
Gandhi told MPs to send a message to the world that India was ready to eradicate hunger and malnutrition, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as a “national shame.”
“The big message which will go out to the country and rest of the world is clear and concrete: that India is taking the responsibility of providing food security of all its citizens,” she said. The draft law was implemented through an executive decree in July but must be approved in the national Parliament to begin functioning permanently.
“Our goal for the foreseeable future must be to wipe out hunger and malnutrition from our country,” Italian-born Gandhi told lawmakers to applause in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament.
The draft law proposes offering five kilograms of subsidized food grains per month to nearly 70 percent of the population, or 800 million people, and is seen as a vote-winner for the Congress ahead of elections next year.
Indians classed as below the poverty line already receive subsidized kerosene, cooking gas, fertilizer and wheat through what is the world’s biggest public distribution system. But the chaotic welfare programs are notoriously inefficient and riddled with corruption.
Gandhi, widow of slain former premier Rajiv Gandhi, said the law would strengthen India’s leaky food distribution network.
“The food security security bill ... puts pressure on (the) executive to be more responsible and accountable and also puts in place credible mechanism to redress grievances,” she said.

Her government says the program will add 230 billion rupees ($3.6 billion) annually to India’s existing 900-billion-rupee food subsidy bill.
Gandhi has pushed the program to honor a 2009 election pledge, despite concern about its impact on public finances.
Critics of the food program say that India can ill afford such a costly subsidy burden at a time of slowing economic growth.

Parliament session extended

India has extended the monsoon session of Parliament by seven days until Sept. 6, government officials said on Monday, giving the Congress party-led ruling coalition more time to pass economic reforms after weeks of disruptions in the house.
Asia’s third largest economy is growing at its slowest pace in a decade and the government is keen to pass several bills economists say will help reverse the malaise.
Protests by members on issues as wide-ranging as sex crimes, corruption and the creation of a new state had until Monday virtually paralyzed parliament, but a debate on a $20 billion populist food bill broadly supported across the benches raised hopes the logjam had been cleared.
A Congress party member of Parliament and a parliamentary affairs officer told Reuters the session had now been extended by a week. The decision was due to be formalized after a cabinet meeting later on Monday.
The government will try to pass a bill to allow foreign investment in the pension sector during the extended session, a law seen as a first step to building a viable private pension industry in India.
Also up for debate is a bill setting rules for compensation for land acquired for infrastructure projects and industry, a move seen as raising costs but potentially reducing protests that have plagued India’s industrialization drive.
In 2012, parliament passed just 22 of the 94 bills listed for consideration. The government aimed to pass 43 bills in the current session.