Elections over, so are free rations: No free lunch in UP

After milking the ‘free ration’ scheme before the assembly election, Uttar Pradesh Government is now threatening ineligible ration card holders if they fail to surrender their cards. If they fail to do so, they would be liable to pay the market rates (wheat @24 Rupees a Kilo and rice @32 Rupees) for what they had received.

The ineligibility criteria are sweeping enough. Any household with a four-wheeler or a tractor, five acres of land, a government job, a 5 KVA generator, a licensed firearm or a house on 100 square meters of land are no longer eligible for ‘free ration’ or even sunsidised foodgrains.

The whimsical and poorly thought out fatwa in one stroke has disqualified Rafiq Ahmed in Saharanpur, Mahesh Chaudhary in Meerut and Rajendra Yadav in Azamgarh. Ahmed had secured a bank loan two years ago to buy a van to transport school children. “I have a family of five and with rising prices, I find it difficult to put food on the table.” Chaudhary too had bought a tractor with a bank loan. “I don’t have even half an acre of land. I rented the tractor out to make some money,” he said. Yadav does have land above five acres but claims he is too ill to cultivate the land himself. He lets others cultivate the land in lieu of a share in the crop.

The Government seems unaware about inflation or the ground realities, quips Utkarsh Sinha. The decision makes even less sense, says Ziaul Islam, because as much as 40% of the wheat crop this year was damaged due to unseasonal rain. While the farmers are bearing the brunt of low prices, the traders and exporters of wheat are making a killing despite or because of the Government’s flip flop on wheat exports.

Confusing and conflicting figures of wheat procurement and dispatch have confounded people. While only 12 thousand MT of wheat were procured in Gorakhpur by May 16, as much as 75 thousand MT of wheat have been dispatched to ports for export. Meanwhile, the Food and Civil Supplies Department has informed that from June, the public distribution system would supply only rice and no wheat.

Accusing the Government of using ‘free ration’ scheme as a political tool, the opposition questioned whether it would be used again before the next election. “ Bribe the voters before the election and tighten the screws on them after the election” is a pattern, alleges Sharad Kumar Singh.

Uttar Pradesh is said to have 3.61 Crore ration cards feeding 14.97 crore people. During his first term in power, the Yogi government claims to have cancelled as many as 93 lakh ration cards. Two years ago it had claimed that as many as 64 thousand farmers with annual income running into several lakhs of Rupees were availing of free ration. But in view of the election it seemed to have turned a blind eye to the aberration then.

(This was first published in National Herald on Sunday)