A tale of two friends- One of the friends was a regional distributor of the food grains to the rations shop owners. The other was a rice miller. Every time the distributor got a weekly allotment for collecting the food grains, he would hand over a part of it to his rice miller friend to repack the grains and deposit with the official agency against his quota of levy rice. Since both the friends had been in this family business for years, this had become an established norm. They could sell the same Government foodgrain back to the Government a number of times thus. Every time the official agencies were sent the bills for foodgrain, transportation and subsidy.
The smaller players in the game i.e. the ration shops were given a share of their allotment for informing the beneficiaries at the grass root level that the ‘allotment’ had not been made by the ‘Government’. All the beneficiaries believed that the allotment for the foodgrain came once in a blue moon. At least two generations had become older living with this ‘fact’. The occasional distractions were in the form of some isolated starvation deaths reported in interior places and those would later be ‘diagnosed’ as cases of ‘tuberculosis’. As if malnutrition was not known to have any impact on the health of the people.
Gradually this friendly practice between the distributor and the miller became so rampant that substantial amount of the foodgrain distribution started occurring only on papers while the bills were claimed for real. Those distributors and ration shop owners who did not get into collusion with the rice millers started selling the PDS rice in the open market.
The fact remains that there are actually no numbers available as to what amount of foodgrain reaches the beneficiaries under the various schemes, which would vary from shop to shop and region to region.
To check the malpractices, there are orders to demonstrate the list of the beneficiaries in the ration shops. The ration card shop owners rarely display these lists. The reason is that there might be huge duplication of beneficiary names or presence of bogus beneficiaries in the list. One copy of these lists is also supposed to remain present in the local self government office. While some exceptional panchayat went to the extent of painting the list of the beneficiaries on the public wall, for transparency, a majority don’t even preserve these lists.
In one case when there was a complaint of non distribution of the foodgrain by two of the ration shops. When the shops were inspected they had not displayed the beneficiary list, their licenses were suspended and the beneficiaries were tagged to the ration shop of the neighbouring area. Ration shop owners still managed to create a lot of disturbance on the ground of inconvenience to the local public due to large distance from the new shop. They could keep the administration on its toes under the threat of sub-division wide strike by all the ration shops. Though that was manageable, the repeated deputations by the association were a regular irritation.
At the lowest Panchayat tier, i.e. on the seat of a member of a Panchayat, it is very common to have either the Ration shop owner or his family member as the elected representative. This becomes easier considering the clout these people exercised locally owing to their capacity to control the supplies of the ration.
A Case of 'Official Activism'- In one case a truck was caught carrying the PDS grains after it had left the distributors godown. The driver and the small scale rice seller in the neighbouring district were arrested and the police handed over the truck and its content to another distributor to hold it in his custody. The poor fellow had to accept this job unwillingly. The concerned official of the food department immediately raided the godown of the custodian and suspended him, while no action was initiated on the person illegally selling the PDS grains. That was an amazing case of 'official activism'.
The district administration had to stand against this case of gross injustice and finally suspension order was received against the food official who had suspended the custodian. The order mentioned the service of the order to be made against the suspended official in 24 hours. In one of the previous instances against the same food official, such an order had not been served as he had gone into hiding for 24 hours without trace. In this case also, despite a number of raids, the person was untraceable. Finally, he was nabbed in a distant district where police had been deployed beyond his anticipation. It was an instance of suspension of one of the most senior officials in the entire racquet.
The smaller players in the game i.e. the ration shops were given a share of their allotment for informing the beneficiaries at the grass root level that the ‘allotment’ had not been made by the ‘Government’. All the beneficiaries believed that the allotment for the foodgrain came once in a blue moon. At least two generations had become older living with this ‘fact’. The occasional distractions were in the form of some isolated starvation deaths reported in interior places and those would later be ‘diagnosed’ as cases of ‘tuberculosis’. As if malnutrition was not known to have any impact on the health of the people.
Gradually this friendly practice between the distributor and the miller became so rampant that substantial amount of the foodgrain distribution started occurring only on papers while the bills were claimed for real. Those distributors and ration shop owners who did not get into collusion with the rice millers started selling the PDS rice in the open market.
The fact remains that there are actually no numbers available as to what amount of foodgrain reaches the beneficiaries under the various schemes, which would vary from shop to shop and region to region.
To check the malpractices, there are orders to demonstrate the list of the beneficiaries in the ration shops. The ration card shop owners rarely display these lists. The reason is that there might be huge duplication of beneficiary names or presence of bogus beneficiaries in the list. One copy of these lists is also supposed to remain present in the local self government office. While some exceptional panchayat went to the extent of painting the list of the beneficiaries on the public wall, for transparency, a majority don’t even preserve these lists.
In one case when there was a complaint of non distribution of the foodgrain by two of the ration shops. When the shops were inspected they had not displayed the beneficiary list, their licenses were suspended and the beneficiaries were tagged to the ration shop of the neighbouring area. Ration shop owners still managed to create a lot of disturbance on the ground of inconvenience to the local public due to large distance from the new shop. They could keep the administration on its toes under the threat of sub-division wide strike by all the ration shops. Though that was manageable, the repeated deputations by the association were a regular irritation.
At the lowest Panchayat tier, i.e. on the seat of a member of a Panchayat, it is very common to have either the Ration shop owner or his family member as the elected representative. This becomes easier considering the clout these people exercised locally owing to their capacity to control the supplies of the ration.
A Case of 'Official Activism'- In one case a truck was caught carrying the PDS grains after it had left the distributors godown. The driver and the small scale rice seller in the neighbouring district were arrested and the police handed over the truck and its content to another distributor to hold it in his custody. The poor fellow had to accept this job unwillingly. The concerned official of the food department immediately raided the godown of the custodian and suspended him, while no action was initiated on the person illegally selling the PDS grains. That was an amazing case of 'official activism'.
The district administration had to stand against this case of gross injustice and finally suspension order was received against the food official who had suspended the custodian. The order mentioned the service of the order to be made against the suspended official in 24 hours. In one of the previous instances against the same food official, such an order had not been served as he had gone into hiding for 24 hours without trace. In this case also, despite a number of raids, the person was untraceable. Finally, he was nabbed in a distant district where police had been deployed beyond his anticipation. It was an instance of suspension of one of the most senior officials in the entire racquet.
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