Duare Ration initiative: Pilot project rolled out involving 3K ration shops

Kolkata: The Bengal government on Wednesday launched, as pilot project, its Duare Ration (ration at doorstep) initiative involving about 3000 ration shops—to experience the impact at ground-level before implementing it in a full-fledged way—across the state that would reach doorsteps of the populace within the respective jurisdiction of these ration shops in all the districts except South Dinajpur.

The piloting at South Dinajpur began on Thursday.

There are at least 10.30 crore beneficiaries and about 20,261 ration shops in state. Around 3,000 shops have been earmarked for the pilot project.

A senior official of the state Food and Supplies department said: "The ration shops that have been selected for the pilot project have around 5000-6000 beneficiaries. Only a handful of shops located in difficult terrains in hills, forests and riverine areas have been selected."

He added: "This will help us ascertain the difficulties faced while reaching out and steps can be taken accordingly to plug this gap."

The ration dealers have been asked to divide all beneficiaries under their respective jurisdiction into 16 clusters and designate a fixed day of a week of each month for distribution of foodgrains at each cluster.

The plan is to have a fixed distribution day in a month from 1st Tuesday till 4th Friday for all the 16 clusters.

Dates of the month may vary but the day must be kept the same for each cluster during upcoming months.

All Saturdays will be earmarked for distribution from the ration shops so that people who have been missed or have the desire to collect food grains from the shop due to any urgent reason can do so.

The second half of Sunday would be reserved to distribute food grains in Duare Ration mode for clusters which may have been missed due to holidays or inclement weather conditions.

Entire ration for one month period should be delivered to the beneficiary at one go.

Biswambhar Basu, general secretary of All India Fair Price Shop Dealers' Federation said that a number of ration dealers complained of their difficulty in arranging vehicles and manpower in reaching out to doorsteps of beneficiaries.

Basu who had written a letter to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee regarding the problems faced in rolling out the project held a meeting with state Food minister Rathin Ghosh and former Food minister Jyotipriya Mallick (presently Forest minister) on Thursday.

He suggested that the dealers would be allowed to deliver ration from the shops in the first 15 days of the month and will deliver to the doorstep of only those beneficiaries who will be unable to collect their ration from the shop. "This will usher in feasibility of the project," he added.