Mohammad alam lives with his wife and five children in a mud-brick house in Ran Nagar, a slum in Mumbai that sits on a vast landfill. He makes 200 rupees ($3.15) a day as a ragpicker and wishes he could bribe his way to a card showing he is below the poverty line. It would entitle him to a panoply of benefits, including a grain ration priced at a tenth of what he now pays. But a decade trying to get one through official channels has left him fatalistic about his chance of ever joining the queues at one of the country's 500,000 ration shops. "If I'm destined to get a card, I will get one," he says.
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