Festival season in Bengal is the season of nadu, nimki and homemade sweets, and this year the state government is helping ration card holders stock up. A special Durga Puja package will bring sugar, maida and suji to ration shops at roughly half the market price.
Each eligible family will get 1 kg of sugar, 1 kg of maida and 250 grams of suji in a one-time distribution. These items come on top of the regular monthly rice and wheat or atta, not instead of them. The Food Department says the subsidy is about 50% below market rates.
More families are covered this year. In earlier years, this festive package was mainly meant for beneficiaries under the National Food Security Act. This year, people covered under the state’s own food scheme are included too. In total, more than 2 crore families, about 2.02 crore, are expected to benefit.
The deadline for ration shops is October 14. The Food Department has told that the package items must reach every ration shop by then, so customers should check with their dealer rather than rush on day one.
Some details are still pending. The exact price of each item has not been announced in an official notification yet. The card-wise breakdown of how much each category gets will also be known only when the final order is released. Until then, it is best to rely on the dealer or the department for the final rates.
The ration dealers’ association has welcomed the decision. At the same time, some customers and dealers say that the supply must arrive on time and that shops must sell at the fixed price, which means regular monitoring will matter.
For many families, the saving will not be huge, but at Puja time every rupee counts, and sugar and maida are the basics in most festive kitchens.
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