We have been having our subsidized vegetable shops licensed by the Horticultural Corporation for quite a while now. We have also been privy to the fact that massive corruption was detected in the purchasing of these vegetables from Karnataka which one is reasonably sure still persists.
We have also experienced, at least one can say in Porvorim, that unless you go very early in the morning you will find that fruits and vegetables of any eating utility are finished and all that is available are stuff which are not in the best of condition to consider them fit for human consumption.
Now we are told that come October we will have similar subsidized fish shops. One would expect that they would go the same way as the vegetable shops, fatten the purchasing officials in the procurement agency and provide subsidized fish to all the hotels in Goa, leaving the majority of the individual consumers high and dry. Thus it is suggested that we take a leaf out of Jayalalitha’s book in Tamil Nadu and adapt what she has done there in providing subsidized food to the populace in a model that is best for Goa.
In Chennai and other major cities and towns of Tamil Nadu ‘Amma Canteens’ have been opened which provide cheap, wholesome, hygienic subsidized food. These are self-service and have proved to be very popular with not only the lower income strata of society for whom these were intended but also with student populations and the middle class particularly senior citizens. The idea here is that instead of providing the ingredients at a subsidized price Amma is offering cheap, cooked food that is both wholesome and hygienic. This model leads to less corruption and reaches out to a larger section of the population who require food at reasonable rates at these times of runaway inflation.
This in turn will benefit Goa as a tourism location where an alternative food option will be available to tourists. The government may like to look at this kind of an option rather than do things in the same dreary way and remain feeling superciliously confident and holy that it is providing subsidized fish and vegetables to the people while actually encouraging corruption.
