It was the turn of Food Secretary Alka Sirohi to take on Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Tuesday,with Food Minister Sharad Pawar amusingly watching from the sidelines. The spat between the two happened during the presentation of recommendations by a working group of state food secretaries on using IT to reform PDS in the country. The use of technology should transform existing processes and go beyond modernising, Ahluwalia intervened during one of the presentations,trying to impress the use of smart cards to allow flexibility to PDS beneficiaries to avail subsidy not only on wheat and rice but also on pulses and edible oils. Sirohi said the suggestions were part of various alternatives being considered by the government to reform the system. She also flagged off the issue of viability of fair price shops to maintain the PDS set-up. This attracted a sharp reaction from Ahluwalia,who stressed that consumers should have the option of choosing the shop from which to purchase the grains. While the back and forth between them went on for a while,Ahluwalia later raised the issue again in his address,saying: I was told by a friend sometime ago that the new technology (NT) imposed on an old organisation (OO) results into an expensive old organisation (EOO). He did not appear convinced on the use of digitisation,IT-enabled systems and GIS-based monitoring,among other things conceived by the Food Ministry,as being sufficient to reform the PDS. I laud the effort of the Food Ministry to open up and initiate discussions on reforming the PDS, was the rare praise Ahluwalia showered at the meeting.
