Fair Price Shops aka Ration shops is the topic I have chosen and am going to walk you through the world of Ration shop operations in Tamil Nadu. Before that let us quickly go through the organization, its objectives, some statistics etc., Civil supplies and Consumer protection department has an Organizational structure headed by Minister of Food department followed by many hierarchies of subordinates. They have a system called as Public Distribution system (PDS) in Tamil Nadu to facilitate the operation part and policy comes from Food and consumer protection department of Tamil Nadu. PDS comprises of several stakeholders to carry out its day to day operations. Some of PDS objectives is to ensure affordable prices of essential commodities, ensure availability of essential commodities etc., PDS has been implemented in 38 districts, 310 taluks, 34773 fair price shops and there are 2+crore family cards, 6.7 crores + beneficiaries etc., I think coming up with statistics may be due to watching excessive Vijayakanth movies during my childhood. If you think Ration cards are those old card types with worn down looks then I am sorry you got it wrong. Now they call it as ‘Smart cards’ and they appear just like your credit card and very handy to keep it in your wallet. They have a workflow in place and when people show the card, system sends an OTP and once OTP is verified you get what you want and everything you got comes as a SMS to your mobile and gets updated in the system too. Pretty cool stuff since they even have an App to track everything. Overall, they both have a system and process in place to carry out the operations. So far so good …..
Population of Tamil nadu is roughly seven crores so it is almost 100% true that 90-100% of the people get benefitted from Fair price shops since if you look at beneficiaries it is 6.7+ crores; Our people have a habit that even if they had Oothappam for breakfast they behave as if they had Cheese Ravioli. People often feel embarrassed and shy to go to Ration shops hence they either have their staff or maid go to their behalf. For this service people usually tip 20 INR since the person takes the effort to go, stand in the queue and carry the stuff and does all this by merely showing the smart card. Officer is not supposed to hand over stuff by merely seeing the card since the cardholder has to appear in person but there is a ‘Deal’ worked out between officer and our staff which makes things possible --------Point no.1; Now Ration officers are more than eligible to work as antagonist for Tamil Heroes since they always have Ponnanbalam sort of looks even for Purnam viswanathan sort of individuals visiting the shop. They have this bad policy of forcing people to buy something on top of the commodities they give. This could be Match box, Salt, Wheat flour etc., and this tactic is to make up for the free flow of revenue and staff usually gets stuff worth 20 or 30 every trip ------------------Point no.2; Human Psychology works in such a way that when we get some stuff for a good deal we don’t tend to check it thoroughly and that is what happens since we don’t weigh whether we got 1kg of sugar or 750 grams (no prize for guessing what happened to the missing 250 grams of sugar) ------------------Point no.3; Now that we got the monthly stuff from fair price shops people are happy but not every time we get good stuff from these shops since sometimes we tend to get average stuff too and on those occasions we pass the stuff to needy or to the person who helped us. This could have been a deliberate attempt by the person himself since they know by bringing in inferior stuff from the shop they may sense there is a good chance that stuff would be directed to them eventually --------------Point no.4; Now if you sum up all points it outweighs the advantages you inherit by going to the Ration shops3.
Hence, I decided to take the plunge myself and realized 2 to 3pm is a time where Sun shows no mercy and it is considered to be Non peak time. But seldom did I realize if God gave me brains it is the same God that must have given Brains to my friends too ..One fine afternoon when I went I spotted one of my friend and both of us had Bhagyaraj sort of smiles ..Thanks to Corona ..due to Mask we were wearing we couldn’t see each other smiles evidently …I just want you to watch the following scene in Mouvna Raagam before I can express what each of us thought
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=
(Listen from 15:50 onwards ….)
Imagine myself as Revathi and my friend as Mohan ….Now mind voice starts ….
Myself: Aaha ipo naan enna panradhu
Naan inga vanthutaenu yaar kitayum sollada please
Sollamatenu sathiyama sollu naan indha jenmathuku un friend a vae irupaen …
My friend: Neeyum sollamaetunu sathiyama sollu naanum indha jenmathuku un friend a vae irupaen3
Myself: Evlo periya Industrialist a irunthutu nee inga varuvanu naan nenachu kuda paakala
My friend: Nee US return irundum nee Fair rice shops ku varuvanu naan nenachu kuda paakala
Mind voice ends ….
Now that I have walked through the Ration scenario I want to highlight something too. As you can see the Trust factor in the case of the staff for a mere 100-200 rupees transaction; Imagine businesses worth lakhs and crores on what is happening on day to day operations; Proprietors try to be on top of things until they are 60 or to put it in better words until their Health cooperates. But once their health deteriorates with kids settled either abroad or in IT industry the staff has the final say in the Business. Worst part is owners are aware of everything that is going on but with no major financial commitments and not much help from the next generation they are forced to run the business at the cost of staff’s misbehavior. If the staff is young, has good hold of Business operations then with the help of bank and his in laws funding he starts something on his own thereby bringing the downfall of the company he worked. Bitter truth is some of the Businesses which were having glorious run in 80’s and 90’s are not able to stand up to the current Business culture prevailing in the state. Though GST and Corona are having major impact on the Business I believe these are seasonal and can be ironed out but the black sheep in the form of disloyal staff is a major problem every Business has to handle.
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