Ration cards rule panchayat elections in Bihar
The panchayat elections in Bihar draw to a close on December 12, and many candidates have promised to provide their impoverished voters with ration cards if they are elected. More than half the population in the state live in poverty and a big chunk of them have no ration cards in their name.
There are 17 million ration card holders in Bihar. Photo: @rahulias6/twitter
Supaul, Bihar
Vindeshwari Paswan, a hopeful candidate in the ongoing panchayat elections in Bihar from Ward number 2 of Laudh panchayat in Supaul district Bihar has no ration card. He is not the only one.
Nearly 75 families from the Dalit Dom community live in Birgaon panchayat in Saharsa district and of them less than half hold government-issued ration cards. And ironically, of the seven ward members of ward number-4, who are hoping to be elected, three have no ration card in their name.
One of the main issues being held up in the panchayat elections across the 38 districts of Bihar is how large sections of the poor people in the state are yet to get ration cards. The elections that began on September 24 are being held in 12 stages and conclude on December 12.
A daunting application process
“Most of the inhabitants of Birgaon are unlettered. When they go to the ration shop to get a card they are told to fill up a form on the mobile phone,” Harishankar Dom, a 73-year-old inhabitant of Birgaon, told Gaon Connection. “Only half of the 75-80 Dom families living here have government-issued ration cards with which they can get rice and wheat,” he added. Even if the forms are filled online and visits have been made to the relevant government offices, many of the cards are yet to materialise, Harishankar said.
Many of the election candidates, from the mukhiya or sarpanch to the ward members, are fighting the panchayat elections in Bihar on the issue of ration cards or their lack thereof. The matter is in prominence especially in those areas where there is a predominance of Dalit population.
More than half the state lives in poverty
According to a report by NITI Ayog, in November 2021, titled Multidimensional poverty index, Bihar is the poorest state in the country. Fifty two per cent of the state’s people live in poverty.
The National Food Security Act (NFSA) portal says there are 17 million (17,907,319) ration card holders in Bihar and 87 million (87,172,572) people are benefiting from the rations they draw.
There are two million (2,293,357) beneficiaries of the Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AYY) a Government of India sponsored scheme to provide highly subsidised food to millions of the poorest families. There are 15 million (15,613,962) Priority Household (PHH) beneficiaries in the state for rural families.
According to the 2011 census Bihar’s population was 9.9 crore. And, as per Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), by 2020, the population of the state was 12.85 crore.
“If you want to know the state of development in the village, visit the areas where the poor and the underprivileged live. More than fifty per cent of the villagers do not have the shram card, and more than thirty per cent have no ration card,” Navin Chaudhary, who is contesting the Baghwa panchayat elections in Saharsa for the first time, for the position of the mukhiya, told Gaon Connection. “Up till now the elections have been won only because of support from the upper castes and the important families,” he added.
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Haribhol Yadav from Lodh panchayat in Supaul has won unopposed in Ward-6 and local opinion is, he won because he took up the matter of ration cards.
There are 10 contestants standing for elections from Ward-7. “In Ward-6 about eighty per cent of the people have ration cards and shram cards. In Ward-7 only forty to fifty per cent have the cards. That is the reason we are looking to change the leadership here,” Shibu Yadav from Lodh panchayat, told Gaon Connection.
There are election posters wherever you turn in Kataiyya village in Pipra Block, Supaul district. The faces of election candidates stare back from them beside a list of the promises they will deliver on if they are elected.
“I have forgotten the number of times I knocked on the doors of the mukhiya and the government offices for a ration card,” Leela Devi from Kataiya, told Gaon Connection. The 53-year-old said that her husband 63-year-old Ramji Manjhi received his ration card only six months ago. “The mukhiya himself got it made, before the elections,” she said.
Irregularities galore
“There is a lot of scam surrounding the matter of ration cards,” a ration dealer in Supaul district, told Gaon Connection on condition of anonymity. If the mukhiya has applied online for a ration card for a family of three, often one name goes missing, and sometimes the details are never updated, he added. “No one pays any attention to complaints,” he said. Ration dealers in the state said they were authorised to give ration to only those with cards, but hinted that irregularities were rampant in the issue of the cards.
But there were ration dealers who also said that the fraud had lessened since the use of online E-Pos machines (point of sale machines) set up near the ration shops.
Responding to the allegations of inefficiencies and delays in issuing the ration cards, Manish Kumar, sub-divisional officer, Supaul told Gaon Connection, “Ration cards are being made digitally now. If the forms that come to us are incomplete or have errors in them, what can we do? We are forced to reject them. But there is a complaint number available that people can call and have their grievance redressed,” he said.
But therein lies the problem. Getting the form, filling it up and then depositing it is something that is almost impossible for the unlettered majority of those who are looking for ration cards.
“The poor are struggling to fill up the mandatory farms. Because of this, many of their applications get rejected,” a senior official from Madhepura district, who did not want to be named, told Gaon Connection.
“The online application system barely works. Most work has to be done offline where the mukhiya or some other official who is knowledgeable about the paperwork involved has to repeatedly visit the concerned authorities and get the work done for their people,” Roshan Jha, the newly elected mukhiya of Lakshminiya panchayat in Supaul district, told Gaon Connection.
Echoing the sentiment, RK Mishra who will be voting for the first time in the panchayat elections, told Gaon Connection, “I have watched the election proceedings closely and know for a fact that the people’s representative who does not have the skill to extract work from government offices, will get little done when compared to an educated representative.” From Baghi panchayat in Supaul, Mishra, a former IG in the Central Reserve Police, however added that finally people voted on the basis of caste.
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But, for many in the state the free rations that the government provided them during the lockdown, kept them alive, they said. With people losing their livelihoods and migrant labourers returning home in their hundreds, survival was a struggle and the rations went a long way in keeping their heads above water, people from across the state said.
“I received extra rations for six months and it saved my family,” Asha Devi from Birgaon panchayat in Saharsa, told Gaon Connection.
Read the story in Hindi.