Mumbai:
The National Food Security Bill and its benefits are being debated in the country but they have little meaning for Sonabai Patni's family of five, who lives under a plastic sheet in South Central Mumbai's Elphinstone area.
Teeming once with textile mills, Elphinstone is now home to shiny corporate offices. A small patch of the pavement enclosing one of this office complexes near Kamla Mills was home to the Patni family, now forcefully evacuated since the footpath has been re-plastered and the BMC does not want them squatting on its brand new paver blocks.
When NDTV met the family, Sonabai, the matriarch and the only earning member, was making chappatis. With it raining outside, the family was huddled inside their home, a large black plastic sheet with poles for support on two sides. When we asked her about the food security bill, Sonabai said, "What's that?"
People like Sonabai and her family are the intended beneficiaries of the Food Security Bill. Its aim: to provide cheap food to India's hungry and vulnerable. Under the scheme the government aims to provide Rice at 3 rupees a kilo and wheat at 2 rupees. But most like her have not even heard of it
Continuing to make her chappatis she said, "I have a ration card, I am told it's for very poor people like us, but I don't buy anything from the ration shop except kerosene. The rice and wheat is substandard, you can't eat it and the shop never has any sugar." Sonabai is among the 18000 homeless people in Mumbai who have the Antyodaya ration card, but do not avail the full benefit of it.
Sonabai works as a domestic help. It's not a fixed job and hardly a dependable source of income. In a good month, she may end up with 2000 rupees. "Food, clothes, necessities, bribes I have to pay for them all with little money I earn. My son is unemployed, I have two daughters. They don't even go to school. Tell me how far will 2000 rupees go?"
There is no clarity yet on how the benefits of the National Food Security Bill reach people like her when even PDS benefits don't percolate well to that level. And how will Sonabai access them if she is unaware of the scheme? Will the distribution system under Food security bill better that of the PDS?
As the rain ebbs, Sonabai makes sizzling and spicy tadka for her vegetables. It's a feast today, Bitter gourd, onions and tomatoes.
What will the family eat at night, we ask. "Don't know, there is nothing in the house to cook. But come share my chapatti" she smiles.