Make PDS More Public Spirited

The Public Distribution System across the country is compromised by corruption, so it hardly comes as a surprise that its delivery in Sikkim is cramped as well, choked as much by muddled data as by the departmental indolence that has come to define how matters of food and civil supplies are administered in the State.
While no one minds if benefits are extended to a wider section of the society than would otherwise qualify, monitoring, essential in every aspect of delivery nowadays, becomes impossible when it becomes difficult to sift those genuinely in need of aid and subsidies from those who are already flush with surplus. Fixing accountability for oversights is already compromised in Sikkim by its small size, and rendered impossible by the adulteration that has become the ration card regime in Sikkim making identification of instances of genuine beneficiaries being denied, impossible. Sample this for example: As of March 2010, the Food & Civil Supplies Department was [at least on paper] extending BPL benefits to 70,851 families even though it has officially projected the BPL figures at 43,428 families [or 41% of the population as worked out by the Planning Commission of India in the year 2000].
Then there is the Department of Economics, Statistics, Monitoring and Evaluation [DESME], whose figure of 21,618 families, has been approved by the State Government as the official statistic on the number of BPL in the State. The Department also had around 4.3 lakh ration card holders in the APL category who need to be serviced through the 185 fair price shops in Sikkim. The figures are already looking muddled, and to make things worse, comes confirmation that as many as 45,928 families in Sikkim hold both APL as well as BPL ration cards. The figures are already on the brink of breaking all rules of mathematics, and because every departmental agency charged with monitoring the delivery and distribution of essential commodities is probably aware of how inflated the figures are, approach their responsibility with a slackness which ends up imposing denial even to the genuine beneficiary.
Thankfully for Sikkim, the BPL category has not been denied thus far [as even the CAG Report endorses] in sourcing benefits intended for them despite the extensive leakage and pilferage. The same cannot however be said of the experience of the APL ration card holders [who receive an average of 2 kg rice per month against the prescribed 35 kgs]. Even if this aspect is ignored for now, what cannot be ignored is the fact that the benefits being enjoyed by the BPL section of the society can be enhanced many times over if the list is made more genuinely representative and the delivery mechanism more vigilantly monitored. The Department invokes very little faith among the people, and the incompetence of its ranks extends to how food security is approached even by the fair price shops, an increasing number of whom, as any ration card holder will attest, are neither selling goods at a fair price, nor releasing enough ration to the card holders. One is not even speaking quality of the commodities being dispensed through the FPSs here, just the quantity. It goes without saying that in the absence of any form of monitoring, the quality, as many ration card users will also attest, leaves a lot to be desired. If the Department was more sternly reminded of its responsibility towards Sikkim and subjected to periodic reviews along with the attendant fixing of accountability, the public distribution system will become a more public-spirited service much quicker than most people think possible.