New Delhi:
A week after the Parliamentary panel submitted its recommendations on the Food Security Bill, the suggestions have come in for sharp criticism from the country's watchdog for child rights. The National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) says the report has completely ignored the category of children, who are among the most vulnerable groups in the area of food security.
Under the recommendations, children under the age of two years have been excluded from the take home ration provided under the nutrition scheme of Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS).
The universal and unconditional maternal entitlements enabling exclusive breast-feeding to babies for the first six months of life that was provided for in the bill has been withdrawn.
The parliament panel has also suggested the two-child norm that will, in effect, deny entitlements to the third born, say child rights' activists.
It is the proposition of such changes that the child rights' body feels will adversely impact child mortality and malnutrition numbers.
The committee has also recommended that the maternity benefits be extended to pregnant woman after 'three months into pregnancy', which activists feels excludes the entire post delivery period of six months, which is crucial.
The NCPCR feels that the recommendations are like taking one step forward and two back as the report provides for even fewer entitlements than what is currently available- something the commission finds 'shocking', especially since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself called malnutrition a national shame.
Dr. Vandana Prasad, Member of the NCPCR told NDTV, "The term malnutrition does not figure in this report as though the term malnutrition has nothing to do with food security or insecurity. There are no entitlements for children in the situation of malnutrition, which would be 70-80 per cent of all poor children and 40-50 per cent of all children in the country. Why are we not getting facilities for children who are malnourished? These were the kind of extensions we had expected would come because otherwise we already have more entitlements than the bill is now offering. There is a great deal of confusion that has been created. We don't see that children have got a fair deal in fact ICDS has almost been shown as being unnecessary to children's right to food. We hope the Parliament takes note of these concerns."
Though the recommendations of the standing committee are not binding on Parliament, with an estimated subsidy bill of 1.12 lakh crore on the food security bill alone, there's more than just money that's at stake for one of the most ambitious legislation of the union govt.