The shadow of graft

The ubiquitous ration shops or fair price shops were first introduced way back in the 1940s in the aftermath of the Bengal famine and was revived in the 1960s in the wake of acute food shortage.

The intention was noble – to distribute evenly whatever little food grains were available to the large number of poor people across the country.

Over the years, the backbone of the food security system in the country has emerged as a den of corruption with new and ingenious ways being discovered to bend the rules and divert food grains meant for the poor to the open market. The digitisation of the PDS and linking it to Aadhaar numbers seeks to cut the leakages but racketeers were clearly a few steps ahead of the government when it came to subverting the rules.

The Karnataka government stumbled upon 45,000 bogus ration cards that were linked to invalid and fake Aadhaar numbers in October. In some cases, Aadhaar numbers of unknown persons were linked with bogus cards to make them appear as genuine Aadhaar-seeded ration cards. In Mumbai, the police unearthed a racket involving a manager of an Aadhaar centre, who in connivance with two others, was issuing the unique identity cards to people who did not have valid identification documents.

In Chhattisgarh, the model PDS that earned the state laurels at the national level was subverted to add more beneficiaries. While the state has only 56 lakh households eligible to receive benefits under the National Food Security Act, 2013, ration cards were issued to 70.27 lakh households. The startling numbers set alarm bells ringing in the state administration, which swung into action after the 2014 general elections and cancelled 14 lakh ration cards.

Investigation by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) revealed startling details about top officials and politicians receiving a share of the spoils of the “PDS scam”, which according to estimates amounted to several thousand crores of rupees. The ACB claimed to have exposed the whole chain of pilferage through procurement of paddy from the farmers, addition of thousands of tonnes of paddy smuggled in from Odisha and Maharashtra, carting, storage and allotment of paddy to the millers, recovery of rice from the millers and supply of the rice to the PDS outlets.

As many as 15 people, including government officials, have been arrested in the case and the matter is being heard by the Chhattisgharh High Court. With PDS being the mainstay in providing quality food grains to the weaker sections of society, any attempt to corrupt the system should be dealt with sternly.