Bengaluru: For over three days in the first week of February, the Indira Canteen in Basvangudi didn’t have electricity. The connection was cut after the contractor failed to clear bills in time. It was restored after the dues were cleared.
Clearing dues have become tougher as payments from the Bengaluru municipality have been pending for long, the canteen contractor said, declining to be named.
The canteens, an initiative of the state government that serve food at subsidised rates, have not received any payment from the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike for the past 17 months, and around ₹30-35 crore is pending, a representative of the canteen contractors said.
“Even though this is a scheme for the poor, and the food is sold at a nominal fee, we have to pay the commercial price for electricity,” the representative said, seeking anonymity. “For more than a year, we have been managing without payment, but it is getting difficult.”
Pending bills is one of the many problems faced by the canteens, which have seen a reduction in budgetary allocations. Some of the mobile canteens have even closed over the years.
Indira Canteen is a food subsidy programme run by the Karnataka government, taking inspiration from the Amma canteens of Tamil Nadu. Launched as a flagship project by the Congress government in 2017, the canteens have been neglected since the Bharatiya Janata Party took over the reins of the state, the opposition alleges.
In 2018, when the BJP came to power after Janata Dal (Secular) and Congress MLAs shifted camps, there was speculation that the Indira Canteens will be renamed or even closed. Then chief minister B S Yediyurappa, however, announced that the project would continue. But the Congress alleges that instead of immediate closure, the BJP has been slowly closing down these canteens.
In 2020, former chief minister Siddaramaiah, now leader of the opposition in the state assembly, wrote a letter to Yediyurappa, appealing to clear contractors’ bills. He had alleged that the BJP was trying to scuttle the welfare scheme by not releasing funds on time, making it difficult for the local bodies to clear the bills of contractors.
One of the reasons for the delay in payment was reduction in budgetary allocations. The Karnataka government had been providing 30% subsidy to the BBMP for operating Indira Canteens in Bengaluru. In 2017-18 and 2018-2019, the government allocated ₹100 crore and ₹145 crore, respectively. After the BJP took over, no funds have been allocated for the scheme for the past two years.
As a result, BBMP had to allot funds to the canteens from its already stretched budget. The civic body earmarked ₹60 crore in its 2022-23 budget to runn the canteens, which was less than half of what was allotted in 2018-19.
In December last year, BBMP chief commissioner Tushar Giri Nath announced that all mobile canteens have been closed because of lack of customers. Around 15 mobile canteens were operating at that time.
Even though Nath had claimed that the closure was due to lack of interest among the people, a municipal official said the main reason to shut the mobile canteens was that service provider agencies were not happy with the payment. “Agencies supplying the mobile canteens have started noticing losses due to transportation and low people turn out,” he said, asking not to be named. “The agencies have been complaining about low payment given to them to run mobile canteens.”
The BBMP is yet to clear bills and dues of over ₹2 crore are pending for water connections to the Indira Canteens, said a representative of Adamya Chetana, which runs the canteens in the eastern parts of the city.
“When we took over, there was a pending bill of ₹2 crore, which the previous contractors had not paid because they wanted the water to be supplied at domestic rates and not commercial rates since the food was being provided at cheap rates. Because of this, we don’t have water from BSWSSB (Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board),” he said, seeking anonymity. “We are now forced to buy water from private parties.”
Even though the canteens are facing funding problems, many in the city are still buzzing with action. The Indira Canteen in Dharmarayaswamy temple ward still serves around 3,000 meals everyday. “People still come in, especially on days when idli is served. I don’t know about the politics, but Indira Canteen is still popular among people,” said the cashier at the canteen.
The slow death of the Indira Canteens shows that the BJP is anti-poor, Congress spokesperson Aishwarya Mahadev said.
“The BJP government that is plastering posters across whole walls in the state. It should now put a new poster about how they are taking away food from the poor and also pushing them to starvation. Indira Canteens were conceptualised to ensure that the urban poor and delivery workers had access to nutritious and healthy meals at an extremely low cost, but cutting the funding to a point of closing is not only shocking but also extremely inhumane,” she said.
“The poor in the cities are yet to recover from the pandemic. The government has already cut the amount of rice given under the public distribution system, and now the Indira Canteens are being shut down,” she added. “The BJP can write off corporate loans, but they take away affordable food from the poor.”
A restructuring of the Indira Canteens is underway because there were fears of corruption, according to a BJP MLA from Bengaluru, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“BBMP officials had submitted to the government that there was large-scale corruption by the contractors. So, we are currently in the process of streamlining the system,” he said. “We will relocate canteens in less populated areas to densely populated areas, such as bus stands, railway stations and market areas, and the system will be brought into place to bring transparency in the functioning of these canteens.”
When asked about the reduction in funds, he said that BBMP has the expertise to decide how much money was required for the programme.
