India has passed into law a program to provide free food to about 800 million people, the Associated Press reported.
The Food Security Bill, passed on Monday after a 10-hour debate, guarantees citizens a legal right to food in hopes of cutting malnutrition and easing poverity.The expanded spending will increase food subsidies from 0.8 percent of gross domestic product to 1.2 percent.
According to the AP, the $20 billion food bill will give two-thirds of India's population the right to buy 12 pounds of rice, wheat, millet or other cereals each month. In exchange, they would pay no more than 3 cents per pound. The Food Bill is also providing free food to pregnant women, lactating mothers and children under 6 years old.
India is considered the world's most poverty-stricken and malnutritioned country. Two-thirds of their 1.2 billion people are considered poor and half of the country's children are malnourished, the AP reported.
Food Minister K.V. Thomas called the bill a first step toward improving food distribution in a country where "poor transportation and lack of refrigeration" is over 40 percent.
According to the Washington Post, Sonia Gandhi, president of the ruling Congress Party, pushed hard to get the bill passed.
"We have a chance to create history with this bill," Gandhi told the lower house of parliament late last month, according to the Post. "'The question is not whether we can do it or not. We have to do it."
Others have slammed the program as a shameless plan that the country can't afford and will encourage more waste and corruption.
"What's right for elections is wrong for the economy," said Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, managing director of Biocon India Ltd., a Bangalore-based biotechnology firm. "This is nothing but a populist bribe."
According to the Post, leaders called the bill an electoral "gimmick" that repackaged many existing programs into something that sounds new.
"For four and a half years you never thought of this?" said opposition lawmaker Venakaiah Naidu, according to the Post. "Suddenly a few months before elections you are rushing through this bill."
India was ranked in the 2012 Global Hunger Index as one of 15 countries with the most severe hunger, faring worse than Pakistan, Nepal, Sudan and Mali, according to the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.
According to the AP, India has a long history of creating noble-sounding welfare programs. Many of fail from mismanagement, graft and neglect. India has offered free mid-day school meals since the 1960s in an effort to persuade poor parents to send their kids to school.
The program now reaches some 120 million children. The country gives a similar promise of a hot, cooked meal to pregnant women and new mothers.
