For years, the government has offered relief to consumers by offering certain goods, such as gram flour, edible oil and sugar at subsidized rates through the Utility Stores all over the country. This yer, the government is giving cash directly to the needy, through the Benazir Income Support Programme network, which is monitored through ID cards. While announcing this scheme on Saturday night, on the eve of the first fast of Ramazan, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif disclosed that the government was actually allocating much more money this year than in previous years, Rs 20 billion instead of Rs 7 billion. The scheme involves giving Rs 5000 per family to four million families, and the great argument adduced is that the subsidy is targeted, and will go to those who need the subsidy the most.
It could equally be argued that the families getting the subsidy are not uniformly devout. Indeed, it can be seen that there are different levels of religiosity within each family, and there is nothing to prevent the recipient of the subsidy spending on something like saving for a new bicycle rather than on Ramazan expenses. The Prime Minister congratulated himself on the taming of inflation, but he seems not to have noticed the uptick in inflation shown by the Sensitive Price Index, driven by an increase in food prices ahead of Ramzan. The utility store mechanism was not just bout supply to the poor, but about keeping prices down. The utility stores and Ramzan Bazar mechanisms were plagued by complaints bout quality, but they prevented those selling a better quality from price gouging. Even those who never went to a utility store benefited. That benefit will now be lost.
The government has managed to change a measure meant to benefit all, rich or poor, into a doling out of charity. Fair prices in Ramazan are a sort of social good, much like the roads, on which all travel, rich or poor. In the Holy Month, all need the protection of the state against extortion, even the obscenely rich. No one is supposed to get a handout. The subsidy might now be better targeted, but the government needs to remember that it is not merely answerable to the electorate in matters of devotion, but also to the Almighty.
