Fifty years ago, the months leading up to November found Madras city in the grips of a raging food shortage. Snaking queues outside co-operative stores providing grain had become a common sight, almost reminiscent of the depression years in America.
The Hindu , for instance, reported, “Despite the rain, men children and women stick to queues, some without cover, some under umbrellas, or holding a bag over their heads.”
With grain being in short supply, the Madras government was compelled to purchase rice and wheat in massive quantities from Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, and even got aid from the United States of America.
On November 16, the Congress government in power introduced family cards for rationing provisions in an attempt to tide over the crisis.
According to the allotment system, every adult in every family was entitled to one ‘unit’ comprising one litre of wheat and rice, every week. This meant that each individual was permitted to consume an austere four ounces a day.
This quota system of informal rationing proved to be a success, with over 4.4 lakh family cards being distributed. The Hindu , days after the initiative was implemented, announced that the never-ending queues across the city had significantly dwindled. Sadly, despite the promise held out by these efforts, they were too little too late.
The spike in prices of essential commodities, and the continued shortages in food, cost the Congress government dearly in the legislative assembly elections of 1967. The DMK coalition under the leadership of C.N. Annadurai, which crushed the Congress, implemented a new system of rationing by improving the one it had inherited.
Success or not, the family ration cards, in many distinct ways, shaped the welfare-oriented policies the State is now so famous for.