Friday 19 / April / 2024
New Delhi: Over 100 activists, economists and sociologists asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to respond to the drought in several states and urged him to implement traditional relief measures as well as the National Food Security Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in letter and spirit.
In their letter to Prime Minister they underscored the need for implementing existing measures such as the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA) and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 (MGNREGA) in an effective and expanded manner.
"The response of central and state administrations to looming drought is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion. The scale of MGNREGA works is way below what is required and wages often remain unpaid for months. Even more gravely, the central and state governments are doing far too little to implement the National Food Security Act, three years after it came into force.
"Had the Act been in place, more than 80 per cent of rural households in the poorer states would be able to secure about half of their monthly cereal requirements almost free of cost. In a drought situation food security entitlements should be made universal," said the letter signed by leading activists such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jayati Ghosh, Satish Deshpande, Medha Patkar, Uma Chakravarty, Paul Diwakar, Bela Bhatia, Bezwada Wilson.
Economists Prabhat Patnaik, Vijay Shankar Vyas, Amit Bhaduri, Praveen Jha and Ajit Ranade said, "The highest priority of the central government in a drought situation should be to ensure the creation of millions of additional man-days of work in all affected villages."
"Instead, the government has not even allocated enough funds this year to sustain the level of employment generated last year, Rs233 crore man-days according to official data.
At current levels of expenditure per person-day, this would cost well over Rs50,000 crore," they said.
Members in Lok Sabha on Monday also expressed concern over the unprecedented situation due to drought, scarcity of water and the heat wave in large parts of the country.
Raising the issue in the Zero Hour, Congress member Mullappally Ramachandran said the devastating drought conditions have affected more than a quarter of the 1.25 billion population.
He wanted the situation be declared as a "national disaster" and immediate assistance be provided to the people.
"People by and large are in deep distress and they are panicky about the prevailing situation", he said, adding that experts and scientific community opine that the heat wave conditions will persist for quite some time more.
"Reports say that we are experiencing the world's fifth deadliest heat wave," he said.
He said the entire country was facing acute shortage of water and reservoirs and rivers are drying up.
The Supreme Court has expressed dissatisfaction about the way in which such a grave situation is being dealt with by the Union Government.
Ramachandran was supported by several members.
Sharing their concern, Parliamentary Affairs Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu suggested that the House should have a threadbare discussion to help tide over the situation.
