EVENTS

Anna Panchayat
Public Hearing on Hunger, Food Rights and Food Security
May 30-31 New Delhi

The People's Food Rights Declaration

Recognising that the principle cause of overflowing godowns is the decline in offtake due to the lack of employment and declining purchasing power of the people, combined with rising food prices, and the lack of political will to ensure that the stocks of food reach regions of scarcity at prices affordable by the most vulnerable sections of society.

Recognising that the declining farm prices for commodities and the lack of political will to ensure that farmers get the Minimum Support Price has forced lakhs of small and marginal farmers in to penury, starvation and suicide.

Recognising that the declining return from farming ha resulted in decreasing employment generation in agriculture. The privatisation of water, electricity and seeds has raised the input costs to such heights that farming is becoming unviable for the majority of the farmers of the country, who are small, marginal farmers and peasants.

Recognising that the weakening of the Public Distribution System (PDS), which is being justified on grounds of saving scarce public funds by preventing the rich from accessing subsidised food, and benefiting the really poor has further intensified the vulnerability of the most marginalised people. Instead of food subsidies decreasing, they have increased from Rs.2,500 crores in 1991 to over 13,000 crores in 2001. These increased costs have been transferred to the poor through a doubling of food prices for those identified as Below Poverty Line (BPL). In any case, the BPL/APL division is proving to be totally fictitious because affluent families have been given BPL status and many who were in the APL categories have lost their jobs and livelihood. Given the artificially 'reduced' numbers of poor, the entire PDS has been rendered economically unviable. The poor have a Fundamental Right to a working PDS and the state has a Fundamental Duty to make it work.

Believing firmly that the Right to Food is intrinsically related to the Right to Work. Food for Work and not Food as Aid is the given right of the people. Food-for-Work schemes, which are the only source of work and food during times of scarcity, are giving employment to a mere 3% of the population of the regions affected.

WE, THE PEOPLE OF INDIA, ON THE OCCASION OF THE ANNA PANCHAYAT, DECLARE THAT THE RIGHT TO WORK AND THE RIGHT TO FOOD IS OUR UNIVERSAL FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT AND THAT THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA HAS THE FUNDAMENTAL OBLIGATION OF ENSURING PEOPLE OF THIS RIGHT

1. The Right to Work and the Right to Food should be implemented through the All India Food for Work Programme, and no one should be prevented from enrolling in it. It is the centre's responsibility to ensure work for all.

2. It is the centre's responsibility to ensure food security to those who cannot work, such as old, the ill and the young.

3. The minimum wages for Food-for Work should be paid partly in grain at the PDS price and partly as cash.

4. Relief operations should continue till the next good harvest to ensure that people have food security at all times.

5. Minimum Support Price should be ensured as a national universal for every state and also for private traders.

6. The FCI should procure directly from farmers and distribute directly to PDS outlets. MNCs such as Cargill should not be allowed to trade domestically in food.

7. All corporate subsidies such as zero excise duties, tax holidays, tax concessions, incentives for taking over the storage and distribution, building highways, ports and cold storages, should be immediately removed.

8. Quantitative Restrictions on imports of agricultural commodities should be restored to prevent dumping of artificially cheap and subsidised imported products.

9. Farmers should be allowed to transport grain freely across states within the country without being branded as smugglers. Non-producers including traders should not be allowed to transport grain across state borders to prevent dumping.

10. The 30% of India that is poor should have guaranteed access to affordable food. The existing number of schemes such as Annapoorna, Anna Antodaya, BPL, APL, etc. only encourage government corruption, and waste and have failed to bring food to the hungry. These forced divisions and multiplicity of schemes should be removed.

11. Water and power should not be privatised since this will lead to an artificial increase in the costs of food production, raise the prices of food and destroy our food security.

12. Reduction of costs of production should be achieved by shifting from high external input capital and resource intensive agriculture to low external input, resource prudent, sustainable agriculture that decreases the expenditure of small farmers, increases their incomes, and provides better nutritional security and genuine choices for consumers.

13. LIVELIHOOD SECURITY OF OUR FARMERS AND THE FOOD SECUIRTY OF OUR PEOPLE IS THE REAL BASIS OF NATIONAL SECURITY. ANY INTERNATIONAL RULES AND TREATIES

    There is no food security without land security. Tribal land in Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh is being alienated for mining, dams and other industries. Attempts to change Schedule V of the Constitution which prevents alienation of tribal land should be stopped. The Anna Panchayat condemns the killing of tribals in defence of their land rights.

14. Women and children are the worst victim of famine and starvation. Women are also the best providers of food security. All food security systems should be founded on women-centred household food security. Women should also be made in charge of the community food banks.