These cards give you an identity crisis!

BANGALORE: Once vital to obtaining essential supplies — rice, kerosene, oil, wheat, sugar — at low prices, for those above or below the poverty line, the ration card is today largely a tool of address proof.
From being a passport type of book, the ration card is now a single small cardboard sheet — blue for those above the poverty line and green for those below — with a computerised picture of the head of the house and list of family members.
Getting a ration card, however, remains a tedious process cloaked in the kind of ambiguity that typifies government offices and their processes.
There seem to be different rules for different range offices of the food and civil supplies department in the City. At the north range office located in Vyalikaval, you can get an application form for a fresh card only if you can produce some proof of address. At the east range office located near the RBANMS ground, the application form is available on demand.
“It can take anywhere from 15 days to two months to finally get the card,’’ informs a clerk at the east range office, before adding that there are ways to speed up the process.
Not many touts hang around at these card issuing/cancelling/ modifying range offices located in the north, south, east and west range offices of the food and civil supplies department — headed by deputy directors. However, one standard fixture located usually a little distance away from the actual office premises is a man who helps people fill out forms for a small fee.
With the forms being in Kannada and with many people visiting these offices not knowing the language or being literate, this form-filler generally makes a goodly sum of around Rs 1,000 every day.
Mistakes in the printing of the names of people on ration cards is a frequent complaint at these offices. However, the department handles these requests including addition, deletion of names, surrender of cards and change of ranges with a swiftness not associated with issuing new cards.
Coming to rations, government fair price shops these days continue to offer supplies of wheat, rice, kerosene, sugar and oil. There is a difference in prices for those above and below the poverty line.
While kerosene is largely restricted to a card-based supply, other commodities are made available even without cards.
However, the quality of the commodities is one factor that prevents many people from making purchases at these fair price shops.
“We only procure kerosene on the ration card. The rice and other commodities are usually not very good. By paying a little extra we can get excellent quality commodities in a general store,’’ says Tabassum, a Frazer Town resident.