httpw.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-unpalatable-truths-2248226
rations for malnourished children taste of
corruption
Unpalatable truths
http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-unpalatable-truths-2248226
The more
things change, the more they remain the same. This certainly is true of scams
that continue despite a regime change in governments. The current controversy
over “take-home rations” in Maharashtra, where Women & Child Development
Minister Pankaja Munde has been accused of permitting substandard food to be
doled out to vulnerable infants, pregnant women and adolescent girls, harks
back to similar accusations against the Congress-NCP government in the state.
The
Congress and other opposition parties have accused Munde’s department of
floating a Rs6,300 crore tender for the supply of ready-to-cook food to 40 lakh
recipients in 70 blocks — as against 553 blocks earlier — for the Integrated
Child Development Scheme (ICDS) projects in the state. This was not in
consonance with a 2004 Supreme Court order to decentralise the supply of this
supplementary nutrition, so as to involve local village communities and women’s
self-help groups.
The
opposition alleged that this would permit private contractors and commercial
manufacturers enter this multi-crore business, which the apex court had banned
in 2014. Recently, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court struck down
the tender, which reduced the number of blocks to 70, on the ground that it
didn’t meet the Supreme Court’s decentralisation objective.
This
isn’t the first time that Munde has come under fire regarding such supplements.
Last year, she was accused of clearing in a single day tenders worth Rs206
crores for snacks and other materials for ICDS anganwadis or creches. After the
2004 Supreme Court order, the Maharashtra government laid down that no single
self-help group should supply these requirements to more than five anganwadis
to prevent abuses of the system.
But the
Congress government can hardly claim it is above board in this respect. Out of
the Rs206 crores, the largest contract was worth Rs104 crores for chikki, or
peanut brittle, without calling for e-tenders, as was required for any order
over Rs3 lakhs. It was awarded to Pradnya Parab, a local Congress politician
who heads an NGO called the Suryakant Mahila Audyogik Sahakari Sanstha which
had an annual turnover of over Rs300 crores in Sindhudurg. The chikki was found
to be inedible. As a consequence of the controversy, the Sanstha now has a turnover
of just Rs2 crores a year and has had to cut down its operations and work
force, comprising women.
The apex
court ordered that food should be fresh, local and served hot. In 2009, a
Congress-NCP coalition sub-committee made no mention of chikki or ayurvedic
biscuits, which were introduced two years later. In 2008, Union Woman and Child
Welfare Minister Renuka Chowdhury tried to introduce centrally produced
packaged food to anganwadis but was opposed by her own government. Among other
objections, it was pointed out that such fortified food was not easily digested
by a severely malnourished child.
In the
state assembly, Munde admitted that in some cases, substandard ingredients were
found in the chikki and stocks were recalled. She also acknowledged that a
single contract worth Rs80 crores was awarded to supply children chikki in
anganwadis. However, she also cited, in her defence, how Suryakanta was awarded
contracts worth Rs52 crores and Rs23 crores in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
The role
of the Congress was exposed in 2012 during a case filed by the People’s Union
of Civil Liberties in 2001 against the central government, asking for the
removal of “contractors” for the supply of hot, cooked meals and take-home
rations in the ICDS. The Supreme Court’s Commissioners, NC Saxena and Harsh
Mander, asked the court’s adviser Biraj Patnaik to file a report on the supply
of supplementary rations in Maharasthtra. He pointed out how there were huge
irregularities in this supply, in violation of the court’s orders. Though not
specifically proven, there was “a nexus between politicians, bureaucrats and
private contractors…leading to large-scale corruption and leakages”. One senior
official remained in the same post for a decade.
Even when
these contracts were given to mahila mandals, these were subcontracted to
private contractors, violating the letter and spirit of the apex court’s
orders. This could not have happened without “the active complicity at the
highest levels of governance in Maharashtra”.
Patnaik
looked at contracts awarded to three mahila mandals, though not Suryakant. They
had in turn outsourced the production of take-home rations to private
agro-companies. None had their own production facilities. He established that
de jure and de facto, the ownership of the mandals and these companies was in
the hands of the same family. In each case, the mandal had formed a
sub-committee to oversee the production and financial affairs of a unit owned
by family members of the same sub-committee.
He
referred to how previous investigations had led to the cancellation of a
similar contact in Karnataka of Christy Fried Grams Industry, a private
company, following two years of persistent follow-up with that state
government.
In UP, a
contract had been awarded to a company called Great Value Foods, owned by the
controversial Ponty Chadha, again violating the court’s orders.
In
Maharashtra, apart from the subversion of the rules, the quality of the rations
has been atrocious, leading to it being sold as cattle feed in some cases. The
food packets lacked any nutrition and often were contaminated with fungi and
termites. The Woman and Child Welfare Department had refused to take any
action, arguing — following time-tested bureaucratic stonewalling — that the
case was sub judice.
Patnaik
rues the fact that, according to National Family Survey 3, as many as 5,000
children die every day in the country due to preventable causes, including
malnutrition. “The ICDS is the only institutional mechanism of the Government
to deal with issues of children under the age of six. The Government spends
close to Rs8,000 crore a year on the provision of supplementary nutrition. It
is unconscionable that a country with the highest rates of child malnutrition,
globally, allows rampant corruption to undermine the ICDS and thereby the
future of its children,” he concludes.
It has
now been reported that some 83,000 children in this age group have been
classified as severely underweight in Maharashtra last year, with the mortality
of such children rising three times. This may partly have to do with the
drought. To add insult to injury, the budget of the Women & Child
Development department has been reduced by 62 per cent. Nature and human greed
have combined to reduce the state’s human development indices to abysmal
levels.
The author is chairperson, Forum of Environmental Journalists of
India (FEJI)
