A senior government official announced that the central government will establish retail outlets at key metro stations in the national capital this month, offering kitchen essentials like onions, pulses, and atta at discounted prices to consumers.
If the project proves successful, the official indicated a readiness to extend it to other cities like Mumbai, Chennai, and Bengaluru, all of which boast metro rail networks.
The escalating costs of essential food items such as wheat, rice, pulses, sugar, and onions pose a significant worry for the union government, particularly as it approaches the general elections scheduled for April-May 2024, where it will seek voter support.
The first store will be established at Central Delhi’s Rajiv Chowk metro station to capitalize on its high footfall. It will be owned and operated by the National Cooperative Consumers’ Federation of India Ltd (NCCF), an organization responsible for procuring agricultural commodities such as food grains, pulses, spices, oil seeds, pharmaceutical items, and other consumer goods on behalf of the government. The store aims to sell these products to consumers at reasonable rates.
NCCF is planning to establish 15-20 stores at metro stations in Delhi. Presently, the organization operates mobile vans in various cities to distribute subsidized food items. However, this program has a restricted outreach.
Propelled by irregular and insufficient rainfall, retail inflation reached a 15-month peak of 7.44% in July, with food price inflation surging to 11.5% — the highest in over three and a half years.
Despite the government’s interventions, such as banning wheat exports, limiting sugar, onion, and rice shipments, importing pulses, and selling wheat, rice, and vegetables like onions from its reserves, food inflation, constituting nearly half of the overall consumer price basket, has decelerated but persisted at a high rate of 6.61% in October.
The official stated that the government aims to extend its outreach to a larger consumer base and facilitate their access to the provided subsidies by establishing these stores in metro stations.
“This is a part of a pilot that NCCF is doing together with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation,” said the official, adding that, if successful, this will be replicated in other major cities which have the metro rail.