New Delhi:
The government's flagship new food security scheme to feed two-thirds of the population will depend heavily on hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers such as Brij Kishore.
The 52-year-old has been running his Fair Price Shop, a government food dispensary, for more than 30 years from a one-storey warehouse in the northern district of Jahangirpuri in New Delhi.
Rough-hewn sacks of wheat, rice and sugar, which are sold for Rs 2 per kilo, are piled ceiling high, bearing the markings of government warehouses in neighbouring Haryana.
Several bags are emptied out on the floor by Kishore's assistant, who in between serving customers with a large scoop, kicks back the tide of grain with his dirty sandals.
Under the new welfare scheme, that will cost the country Rs 1.30 lakh crore, about 800 million people will be entitled to five kilograms per month of subsidised grains from shops like these. The scheme is expected to deliver high returns for the ruling Congress as it seeks a third straight term in the national elections due by May. It was passed by Lok Sabha on Monday and will have to be approved by Rajya Sabha and then the President before it becomes a law.
But the current distribution system is dogged by complaints from customers that they are routinely shortchanged on their rations by shopkeepers, who then sell the extra grain on the black market to help compensate for their own thin earnings.
"We are working on a non-profit basis," complains Kishore, estimating his monthly income at Rs 8,000-10,000. "But it's forced on us because we don't have a choice."
As a result, corruption "happens everywhere... In some places, it's worse than others," he says.
As Kishore's customers leave his shop, they are eager to share their frustrations with the public distribution system.
Santosh, a 35-year-old mother who feeds four children and an unemployed husband at home, says she is routinely deprived of 10 kilograms of grains which she says are then sold on the black market.
"We have been getting 20 kilos of wheat and five kilos of rice and the wheat is full of dirt," she spits.
Her complaints are echoed by others, who say that their grievances go unacknowledged by local administrators.
Kishore admits that he sells the "surplus" rations left behind each month, which he says is a necessary addition to his meagre income.
He claims the commission he receives for selling 35 kilos of produce to a client is about 12 rupees and it hasn't budged in years.
The shopkeeper is part of the world's biggest food distribution system for the poor, which already covers 100 million "below poverty line" families and another 140 million "above poverty line" families, official data shows.
As well as changing the criteria for the entitlements - hand-outs will be mostly per capita instead of per family - the prices at Fair Price Shops will be reduced.
But the scheme will depend on an inefficient national network of public granaries, transporters and 500,000 ration shops.
One widely quoted study published in 2005 by the Planning Commission, a government advisory body, found that 58 percent of grains in the Public Distribution System (PDS) failed to reach their intended destinations.
Ashok Gulati, chairman of government's Commission for Agriculture Cost and Prices (CACP), describes the PDS as like "carrying a bucket full of water that is 40 percent broken."
"The biggest challenge is not restructuring, the biggest challenge is plugging the leakages," he told AFP.
An additional five million tonnes of publicly procured food grains will be pumped into the PDS to meet the new demand in the current year.
Other recent surveys have found improvements in the system, however, with the central state of Chhattisgarh emerging as an example for the rest of the country on how to make changes.
A large study in nine states in 2011 found that 97 percent of eligible respondents received their quota there, compared with just 18 percent in impoverished northern Bihar.
Economist and activist Jean Dreze, who advised the government on the legislation in the early stages, agrees it could have forced more reforms of the PDS. The fact that the system is not computerized, he says, is a "scandal."
But he says people will be more aware of their entitlements and the system will make better use of the millions of tonnes of food grains which the government is already committed to buying from farmers.