 Who needs free food? Do you need it? You want it? You surely don't need it. If you're sitting and watching me speaking in English and you're watching it on your smartphone or laptop, you don't need any free ration. Only the very poor need free ration, where they don't have to pay anything for the staples like rice and wheat. That is because they don't earn enough to be able to pay for it in the open market. In fact, when the government or any institution gives free or subsidized rations and free food grains to the poor, it acts like a form of price control. Traders selling rice or wheat of similar quality in the local shop can't make their price too high because some part of the demand which comes from the very poor is taken out of the equation, out of the system. So, the question is how many people in India are so poor that they need to be given free food by the government? If you take the World Bank's estimates for 2019, for instance, it's only about 10% of Indians who could be counted as poor, which is about 14 crore people. The number is higher if you take the estimates of the so-called multi-dimensional poverty calculated by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative. Then India had about 23 crore people living in poverty between 2019 to 2021, which is approximately 17% of India's population. Since the estimate was for about two years ago, let's say the number has now increased to 25 crore people. So, at best, 25 crore people should get free food, right? After all, the rest shouldn't need it. Then why has the government just announced free rations for over 81 crore people for the next one year as a New Year's gift? Under this scheme, every one of those 81 crore people will get 5 kilos of free rice or wheat every month. So, family of five will get 25 kilos of free food grain without having to pay a penny for it. Those who are at the bottom of the scale, the poorest of the poor, who are called Anthoda in government parlance, in government schemes, will get even more. Anthoda families will get 35 kilos of free food grain per month. That means the government acknowledges that 81 crore people or nearly 60% of India's population cannot afford to pay for food at market prices. And this is exactly when the government is effectively admitted by saying that the poor will no longer have to spend even a penny on their food security. In fact, even the UP acknowledged that two-thirds of Indians need to be given subsidized food without which they will not be able to survive. The National Food Security Act under which the free ration scheme has been extended right now is a law introduced by the UP after all, which covers 67% of Indians and gives them subsidized food grain. Even at that time, the official data on the poor was less than half of that number, close to one-third that number. In fact, there are several economists, mostly from the left, who say that even the 67% is a conservative estimate. The proportion of poor people in India who need free food, who need subsidies, help is even higher. This is what we have achieved over three decades of market-driven reforms and privatization, which has produced some of the world's richest people and kept an overwhelming majority in poverty. They have gained nothing. The UPS Food Security Act was an underhand acknowledgement of real poverty on the ground, whatever the official poverty data might say. The more the government's move to provide free food, even though the COVID-related lockdowns are over now, is an admission of another kind. It is an admission that India's current economic policies and our current economic system, which is largely driven by private enterprise and the profit motive, even in the public sector, profit determines what is going to be invested, is not going to be able to provide jobs to people. If people get decent jobs, which paid them reasonably well, then they would not need free food or any kind of subsidies from the state. The reason they need it is because they survive on a bare minimum. What is known as subsistence level existence. And by the way, the five kilos of food grade will still not be enough for them to provide them the calories they need. On an average, five kilos of rice per person will make up for less than one-third of the average calorific needs of a person per day. And if they do heavy manual labor, they will need five to six times the calories that five kilos of rice can provide. This can come from proteins and other carbohydrates and oils, none of which are easily accessible to India's poor. None of which is easily accessible to most of India's people. In fact, a survey from 2017 showed that three out of four, every four Indians were protein deficient. They got less protein than the relatively low amount recommended by India's medical council. And things could not have improved significantly in the past five years, considering there have been two years of COVID in the middle, which were preceded by a year of economic slowdown. And we still haven't really returned to our growth path. More importantly, only 41 crore people in India have paid work out of a working age population of more than 110 crore. Most of them work in low-paid jobs. And this number has been stagnant for the past five years, at least, in fact, longer. And the quality of jobs has worsened. I have a video giving details on that, which you can watch. I'll give the link in the description at the bottom. This means an overwhelming majority of families in India need government support to simply keep their nose above water to barely survive. And they have become so used to the state of affairs, having not got work for years on end, that they're happy to get any freebies, any handout that they're given. Indeed, they're grateful that at least the Modi government is giving them straws to clutch at, which others did not before that. So what should be a national shame for us? That 60% of Indians have to depend on free food has become a vote-catching policy and, most likely, a permanent state of affairs to come. It is a brilliant weapon for India's ruling classes, actually. Not only does free food help the poor stay alive and ensures that they don't unite against an unjust, unfair economic system, which they would have, if they had been pushed to a complete despair. But it also actually helps the ruling classes get support from the poor in terms of votes and elections and allows the rich to continue to perpetuate this economic system in the name of a popular electoral mandate. That's the show today. Let us know what you feel on this issue. Write to us, comment on this video, and do press the like button so that YouTube shows it to more people. 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