This is guest post by ANKITA AGGARWAL: Last week a group of about fifteen of us (students who have been working on the right to food in various capacities) met Members of Parliament to discuss the amended National Food Security Bill and how it can be improved. We knocked on the doors of more than a hundred MPs, but managed to meet only about twenty of them. Most of the MPs were away from Delhi, in their constituencies or elsewhere, and a few were “too busy” or “too tired” to meet us.

Our overall experience was quite disappointing. Most MPs were quite clueless about the Bill. But instead of using our visit as an opportunity to inform themselves about the Bill and its shortcomings, most of them preferred to indulge in rhetoric, making statements like “we will raise your demands in the Parliament” or “it’s shameful that there is hunger in the country even so many years after independence”. A few MPs talked to us at length about issues ranging from the demand for Telangana to the impossibly high cut-offs in colleges, but not about how the Bill can be salvaged. Some MPs were of the opinion that there was no scope for discussion of the Bill in Parliament, and that it was pointless to discuss it with us. Continue reading Food Security Bill – MPs clueless: Ankita Aggarwal →