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PDS outlets set for a quiet exit in Mangalore

Our Bureau

MANGALORE, April 22

THE logic of the `globalised' and `liberalised' economic era continues to take its toll; and this time it is those who run the public distribution system in urban areas for the past 40-odd years who are at the receiving end.

With the erstwhile `ration shop' or `fair price shop' is set to make a quiet exit from the urban landscape, 105 shopkeepers from Mangalore have submitted a memorandum to the Karnataka Government seeking to retain a source of livelihood which was once syn onymous with the so-called socialist era.

With the dismantling of all the institutions which, at least, symbolically formed the core of the post-Independence economy, the public distribution system has become `financially unviable' for the shopkeepers though the Government is ostensibly trying t o `target' the `deserving beneficiaries' more accurately than has been done in the past.

According to the shopkeepers in Mangalore, the overheads are mounting. There are rumours that from next year the public distribution system -- in urban areas, at least -- will be completely dismantled. The Government keeps striking off items from the PDS list, prices keep shooting up, and a time might come when only kerosene will be left, that too to only 25 per cent of card-holders who do not have gas connections. There are also rumours that the entire system would be revamped and even kerosene will be struck off the list.

As of now, a shopkeeper earns a commission of 16 paise on one litre of kerosene. The Government supplies kerosene at Rs 7.40 per litre and it is sold at Rs 7.70. The distributor takes 14 paise leaving the shopkeeper with 16 paise. Depending on the number of card-holders covered by a particular shop, the profit earned varies from Rs 300 to Rs 700 per month.

Various license fees and taxes, in addition to higher rents and the hike in power tariffs, have made maintaining fair price shops exorbitant, like owning an elephant and not being able to feed it. In addition, the shopkeepers are expected to maintain up to 10 different kinds of ledgers to restrict `malpractices'. The annual license fees, according to the shopkeepers, amounts to about Rs 2,000.

The shopkeepers have started submitting memorandums to the Government. The first memorandum was submitted seeking a hike in commission on kerosene. The memorandum also included a demand that they be considered `Government servants' and given a pension; t hey also want one person in every shopkeeper's family to be given a Government job.

`Not enough publicity has been given to our plight and the newspapers are silent about people like us. If our story appears in the papers something might happen,'lament many.