New Delhi, April 15 (Inditop.com) With an aim to get the policy makers’ attention on the very day when parliament opened after a month-long break, activists staged separate protests in the capital Thursday over the women’s reservation bill and the food security bill.
Annie Raja of the National Federation for Indian Women, who along with several others staged a protest over the food security bill, said: “Since parliament began today (Thursday), it was important to knock on the policy makers’ doors from day one itself. Our parliament must know the betrayal that the Indian government would be committing to the people of this country if it agrees to this minimalistic bill.”
Activists from a number of NGOs and others like Harsh Mander, special commissioner on Right to Food and Anuradha Chenoy of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) participated in the protest.
In a letter to the prime minister last month, the NGOs said: “We are distressed by the proposed draft bill of the National Food Security Act which proposes an entitlement of 25 kg of food grain at Rs.3 per kg to each below-poverty-line (BPL) household. This is lower than the current entitlement of 35 kg per household as mandated by the Supreme Court.”
Mander said: “There is no shortage of food and resources in the country, but it is the government’s responsibility to ensure that no one suffers from hunger and no child suffers from malnutrition. This obligation will not be fulfilled if the government supplies 25 kg ration to a limited few.”
“Today some people have excess food and money while others go to bed hungry. Nothing short of a universal entitlement for the public distribution system would suffice to change the existing situation,” he added.
Voicing their opinion on a different issue, a group of women along with NGOs demanded that the women’s reservation bill be passed without any further delay.
“The womens’ reservation bill is the first step towards addressing the historic injustices faced by women in our country and should be passed without any further delay. We have serious concerns about the inclusion of excluded women especially Muslim women and other backward women,” Sehba Farooqui of the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) said.
“We want all concerned to seriously look at this apprehension and think collectively about a democratic mechanism to enable participation of excluded women,” she added.
The women’s reservation bill which promises 33 percent quota to women in the Lok Sabha and the state legislature was passed in the Rajya Sabha before parliament went into the break.
Both the protests were held at Jantar Mantar in the heart of the national capital.
