Rarely do Indians get a chance to watch their ministers scramble to fulfil a promise they had made to them before elections as the people of Karnataka are witnessing now. The Congress government, which came to power on the back of five programmes aimed at easing the burden of life for the commoner, had started off well by implementing some of them, but is finding it tough to source enough quantities of rice to meet the requirements of its Anna Bhagya scheme. The government, as per the scheme, would make 10 kg of foodgrains available every month to each person below poverty line (BPL) in the state.

After the Karnataka results convinced every political party of the strike power of the freebie promises, the focus now is on their realisation. If the Congress is able to launch the rice scheme and run it successfully, it can have reverberations across the country in an election year.  No wonder, as Karnataka approached the Food Corporation of India, India’s official stockist and supplier of foodgrains, for additional quantities of rice, the Union government suddenly realised its duty to make foodgrains freely available to every Indian and promptly stopped the sale of rice and wheat to state governments from the central pool under the Open Market Sale Scheme (OMSS). Its impact on prices across the nation is yet to be assessed. 

The BRS government in Telangana which is all set to fight a resurgent Congress in the Assembly polls later this year has expressed its inability to help out the Congress government in Karnataka; Andhra Pradesh, a rice-bowl, is yet to decide on its ability to do the same. Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh and AAP’s Punjab are willing to chip in but the transportation costs appear to be a spoiler. The search is still on.

Freebies would be detrimental to the long-term economic interest of the nation but when it to comes to such basics as food, it is worthwhile for all stakeholders to work collectively to deliver.