'Implement Maternity Benefit In Rationing System'

105 representatives from all districts of West Bengal belonging to 35 people’s organisations, NGOs and unions of the Right to Food and Work Campaign West Bengal met on 22^nd and 23^rd February 2016 at Barasat to discuss the issue of food security and the steps taken by the State Government recently to implement and supplement the National Food Security Act. The following is the statement that they have all agreed to release from this meeting.

Responding to the escalating violence and tensions around the issue of the new digital ration cards, the Chief Minister and the Food Minister have stated that everyone will be given rations. While welcoming such a statement, we would like them to now back it up with sufficient funds, food grains and administrative action to ensure that everyone does get cheap rice and wheat.

In a country where reports of hunger and malnutrition are an everyday occurrence, the universal right to food is the only way forward. From our discussions over two days, it is clear that the poorest have either got no rations or have been made part of the RKSY II which provides only 2 kg of food grains per head at the hugest cost, while many rich people have been declared Antodaya or the poorest of poor and are getting the largest amount of rations. Nepotism and faithfulness to the ruling party have put many non-deserving people on the lists while many beggars, homeless people, Adivasis and other deserving categories have been left out. In addition, things have been complicated with 5 categories of cards each of which has different entitlements.

In addition, we have also found that the National Food Security Act (NFSA) remains only partially implemented. Most importantly, the maternity benefit entitlement of Rs.6000 for all pregnant women that has been given under Section 4(b) of the Act has not been implemented at all so far. To stop leakages, the Act has provisions for vigilance committees, social audit, District Grievance Redressal Officers and efficient systems of complaints through help lines, web sites etcetera. None of these are properly in place in the State as yet.    Moreover, in order to actually have food security, this meeting feels that there is the need to go far beyond the NFSA. Therefore we demand

·         Immediate implementation of “Food for All” with only one category of at least 7 kgs of food grains per head at Rs. 2 for the entire population of the State ( by our calculations this involves only an additional amount of Rs. 2896 crores or  2.6% of the total funds available with the State Government)

·         Exclusion of the very rich as per exclusion criteria that are already there in SECC or as per the their voluntary declaration for exclusion

·         Immediate implementation of the maternity benefit entitlements given in NFSA

·         Immediate and effective implementation of all grievance redressal and transparency mechanisms provided for in the Act

·         Ensuring that tea garden management continues to provide rations to the tea garden workers, which is their accepted right as workers, and does not replace these with the Government’s rations under NFSA, which is the right of the tea garden population as citizens of the country

·         Ration shops must be handed over to SHGs and cooperatives , with the stoppage of corrupt ration dealers

·         Gradual expansions of the rationing system to provide other nutritional essentials like pulses and oil at subsidised rates, along with increasing the food grains allocation to the full nutritional requirement of 14 kgs per head.

·         Emphasis on local procurement and local storage of food grains, with such facilities in every GP

·         Emphasis on revival and support for safe and organic agriculture , so that agriculture and development is for food first

The meeting also declares the following as its future programme:-

·         On March 8^th, International Women’s Day, a programme with local meetings and signature campaign centred on immediate implementation of maternity benefits in NFSA.

·         Lobbying by village Right to Food groups and at all other levels in the State to get all parties to include our demands in their manifestos.

·         A people’s convention of Right to Food village groups in July to put forward our demands on the Right to Food to the new Government, preceded by trainings, conventions and meetings in all districts.

Anuradha Talwar              Debojyoti Chakraborty                        Father Jyoti S J

Response to W.Bengal Chief Minister On Digital Ration Cards

Responding to the escalating violence and tensions around the issue of the new digital ration cards, the Chief Minister, Smt Mamata Banerjee has stated that everyone will be given rations. While welcoming such a statement, we would like her to now back it up with sufficient funds, food grains and administrative action to ensure that everyone does get cheap rice and wheat.

In a country where reports of hunger and malnutrition are an everyday occurrence, the universal right to food is the only way forward. Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity has always opposed targeting. As a system of choosing beneficiaries for food and other schemes, it has led to huge inclusion and exclusion errors, with the deserving being left out and the affluent and politically powerful cornering all benefits. The lists that have been prepared for distribution of digital ration cards suffer from many such problems, especially as no public participation, in terms of consultation with Gram Sansads and Ward Sabhas was done while preparing these lists. They are therefore full of errors. Nepotism and faithfulness to the ruling party have put many non-deserving people on the lists while many beggars, homeless people, Adivasis and other deserving categories have been left out. In addition things have been more complicated with 5 categories of cards each of which has different entitlements.

We call on the State Government to allow for only one category under which all people who want rations will get rice and wheat at Rs.2 per kg. As the per head requirement for food grains as per ICMR norms is 14 kg per adult per month, this has been our demand throughout. If it is not able to provide this quantity immediately, we demand that the State Government should ensure half this quantity of 7 kg per head (the Antodaya Anna Yojana quantity) for all citizens as a start.

The State Government was already spending Rs.1,930 crores on cheap food before the implementation of National Food Security Act. It has now plans to spend another Rs.2300 crores to provide everyone under the NFSA with Rs.2 rice and for the two state schemes. By our calculations, extending a uniform system of 7 kg of food grains to the 3 crores uncovered by NFSA would require another Rs.2896 crores. The 2015-16 State budget projects revenue of Rs.46,500 crores, while the Centre has provided the State Government with another Rs.63,578 crores under the 14^th Finance Commission funds. Food for All thus requires only an extra 2.6 % of this total amount.

Getting food to everyone also requires administrative back up in terms of tagging people to ration shops, giving everyone ration cards, arranging for storage etc. We demand that all such steps be taken to make the TMC slogan of “Food For All” (a slogan that is also endorsed by all Left parties ) a reality.

Uttam Gayen, General Secretary

Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity

International Fact Finding Mission Visiting Tea Plantations

An International Fact Finding Mission is visiting and tea plantations in Assam and West Bengal from November 27, 2015 to December 4, 2015. With 18 members from 9 countries, the purpose of the Mission is to understand the status of the human right to food and nutrition - and related rights - of tea plantation workers and to hold central and state governments accountable to their national and international human rights obligations. The mission team has visited tea gardens in the Dooars, Darjeeling and Assam and has had discussions with both tea workers and their unions. It is also meeting concerned officials in Assam and West Bengal such as Mr Amit Mitra, Minister of Industries, Mr Moloy Ghatak, Minister of Labour, the Secretary General of the Indian Tea Association, the management of tea companies, such as Tata, Apeejay.

This is the first Fact Finding Mission to be dispatched under the facilitation of the Global Network on the Right to Food and Nutrition (GNRtFN), a network composed of social movements and civil society organisations worldwide to support and give visibility to the struggles for these human rights. This Fact Finding Mission (FFM) is headed by the International Union of Food, Agricultural, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco and Allied Workers' Associations (IUF), who is a member of the GNRtFN. Other participating organisations are FIAN International, Pesticide Action Network, Right to Food Campaign (Nepal), Right to Food and Social Security Campaign (Bangladesh) and the Right To Food Campaign (India). The team consists of activists, experts and trade union leaders from Brazil, Peru,Germany, United Kingdom, Moldova, Spain, Bangladesh, Nepal and India.

The Fact Finding Mission will also contribute to current international processes and dialogues relevant for the human right to adequate food and nutrition.

 

This Is No Storm In A Teacup

Guest Post by Harsh Mander

[The sudden withdrawal by some tea plantation managements in North Bengal of not just regular employment, but also all a series of life-enabling services is proving to be nothing short of catastrophic for workers.]

A largely invisible, grim, humanitarian crisis, of mounting hunger, looms over several thousand North Bengal tea garden workers. Duncans, a leading tea company with 15 plantations in Darjeeling and the Himalayan foothills, has plunged its workers into a precarious state of illegal limbo. It has neither formally closed its gardens nor is it running operations normally, with devastating consequences for the survival and future of around 15,000 workers and their families.

The company began tea operations in India in 1857, clearing large swathes of dense forests in North Bengal to establish its extensive tea plantations. With other British plantation companies, it transported industrious tribal people from Chota Nagpur and Santal Parganas as indentured, near-slave labour. After Independence, ownership of these companies gradually passed into Indian hands. Although nominally free now, workers continued to work in near-colonial conditions. The dependence and submissiveness of the workers was partly secured by paying part-wages in kind, as food rations, housing and health services. Until recently, most tea worker households were not even issued Public Distribution System (PDS) ration cards. Instead, State governments supplied PDS grain to companies to issue to workers.

In these conditions, if tea garden managements suddenly withdraw these supplies, workers are left singularly defenceless and precarious. The first such crisis was thrust upon workers of 30 tea gardens in North Bengal in 2003-04, when they were illegally closed and abandoned overnight by owners who no longer found them to be commercially viable. Instead of first securing the interests of the workers and gardens, they simply disappeared. On my visits to the gardens at that time, I found several worker households facing conditions of actual starvation.

A similar situation has arisen today with the illegal semi-closure of 15 gardens by Duncans. Early in 2015, the management abruptly stopped paying wages to its workers. It also terminated food rations. It cut electricity and drinking water supplies to worker colonies. For several years, pensions and provident funds had not been paid. Gardens were not maintained, and ageing, unproductive tea bushes, some a hundred years old, were not replaced. Workers’ houses were not maintained for years. Workers allege both apathy and runaway corruption by the management.

Such illegal semi-closure would jeopardise critically the future of workers in any industry. But tea worker communities have been brought up for generations in forced direct dependence on the management even for basic essentials such as food, clean drinking water, housing and health care. For them, sudden withdrawal by the management of not just regular employment, but also all these life-enabling services, is nothing short of catastrophic.

I found workers surviving by travelling to neighbouring gardens and working at low, piece-work rates. These garden managements are profiting from their distress; they pick them up in buses for which they are charged, and workers are forced to spend longer hours to earn far less in uncertain casual employment, with no job security or additional benefits. Others are mining stones on riverbeds and several younger workers have migrated to Bhutan, Kerala, Delhi and Tamil Nadu. Children are dropping out of school and joining the workforce to bring some food to the table. Adding to worker distress, many are dependent on untreated stream water for drinking. No Duncan tea estate has a functioning hospital since 2000: without doctors, medicine, and occasionally a nurse.

Those we found most threatened by hunger were single women, those ailing and the elderly. Phulo Munda, for instance, is a widow of 57 years. As a permanent worker, she earned around Rs.1,600 a month. But since the undeclared closure, she has received no wages. She has only one meal a day. When strong enough, she trudges to the river bed to break stones, for which she gets Rs.70 a week. For August 2015, she earned just Rs.150. The condition of her house is appalling, with virtually no walls. The wooden pillars to support the tin roof were also bought by her. When it rains, she squats with an umbrella inside the house, awake the whole night. Every day she walks 3 kilometres to fetch drinking water, and collects firewood from the forests nearby. Food, fuel and housing were all guaranteed in the past by the management.

This purgatory situation of semi-closure is patently illegal, but labour officials and trade unions have done little to hold the management and owners accountable. The State government has also not started wage work or restored health care, drinking water or electricity in worker habitations. In the inverse government morality of our times, States defend morally and legally culpable failures by wealthy plantation owners and their corrupt and inept managements. Workers are left defenceless, thrown to the edge of survival. 

Harsh Mander is a human rights worker, writer and teacher

(This article was originally published in The Hindu)