The inaugural of the Mana Biyyam scheme on Wednesday provided an opportunity for fair price shop dealers to buttonhole the chief minister with their litany of demands, which include a regular salary and a higher commission than the 20 paise paid to them on each kg of Re 1 rice they dispense to below-poverty-line families.
A large number of ration dealers were among the gathering brought together for the inaugural of the Mana Biyyam scheme, the Kiran Kumar Reddy government’s tweaking of the subsidised rice schthe to ensure that beneficiaries received the prefered AP varieties of rice rather than the Punjab ones.
“Our commission (20 paise) is not sufficient even to pay the rent for our shop,” said one dealer from Mahbubnagar.
Raising slogans, the dealers pressed the chief minister to announce, right there on the spot, measures to make fair price shops viable.
The chief minister said he could not make such a statement right there but would convene a meeting of his staff soon and take a decision.
As the dealers shouted slogans, civil supplies minister D Sridhar Babu pacified them, saying the government has already approved some palliative measures for the benefit of PDS dealers and more would be considered.
The misgivings of ration dealders may have been triggered by the fine print of the Mana Biyyam scheme, launched on Wednesday for three districts, Karimnagar, Nalgonda and Mahbubnagar.
While pledging to dispense good quality (local variety) rice to BPL beneficiaries, the scheme is linked to Aadhar cards and has a proviso of online weighing of rice.
If a ration dealer indulges in faulty weighing, it would be recorded at a central office in Hyderabad and the quantity of rice supplied to that dealer the following month would be reduced.
By this device, the state government is expecting to weed out 40-50 lakh fake ration cards by which racketeers make money in the name of poor beneficiaries.
Also, the 40 lakh tonnes of rice supplied by the scheme would be better targeted.
While voicing their misgivings that Mana Biyyam would hit their earnings, the ration dealers said Mana Biyyam was a necessary finetuning of the Re 1 rice scheme.
Puli Mutthaiah, a dealer from Nalgonda, said the online weighing would leave no scope for any dealer to cheat the beneficiary by underweighing the rice.
Although the Re 1 rice has always been popular, there was criticism that less-preferred varieties of rice from Punjab and Haryana were being fobbed off on the poor.
Mana Biyyam is intended as an answer to that criticism.
Where paddy procurement used to be largely left to the Food Corporatiion of India (FCI), which would pick up a disproportionate quantity of Punjab and Haryana varieties, the state’s Civil Supplies Corporation will take up that role now, to procure local rice for local people.
Along with the Mana Biyyam launch, the goverment is also scheduled to add another scheme to supply to BPL families a bag containing nine essential commodities for Rs 185 against the market price of Rs 292.
The scheme will begin on Ugadi.
However, some glitches were pointed out by the dealers at the inaugural.
One woman dealer from Korutla in Karimnagar district said people in her area procure tamarind, turmeric and other necessities once for the whole year.
So monthly supply of some of these commodities may not work.
