Food for all seasons and reasons

Hyderabad, March 18: Dosas can still be bought for 10 paise, if you care to head out 360 km from Hyderabad into western Andhra Pradesh.

Muni Reddy sells the popular southern Indian food for that much in Kadapa town, which is chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy?s home town.

So what if its size is smaller than a regular masala papad, Muni Reddy has been selling it for decades together and out-of-circulation 10 paise coins have not been a hindrance.

?I never had to deal with odd change as everyone ate in multiples of two dosas at my tiffin hotel,? he says.

?People always ate five or 10 and, on many occasions, they packed in hundreds,? Muni Reddy says. He sells daily over 2,000 dosas that are prepared on huge hot plates in his two-room ground-floor hotel.

The popular item was even cheaper when his mother, Subbamma, kicked off the venture five decades ago. ?She started selling dosas of a bigger size for 6 paise (1 anna) in those days.?

But three decades ago, the small-change problem hit them. ?Nobody gave us 6 paise any longer,? Muni Reddy recalls.

?Since paying change was a problem, we increased the price to 10 paise two decades ago,? says Pulla Reddy, brother of Muni Reddy.

It has remained the same ever since because, as the hotel owner says, ?our mother directed us never to increase the tariff of dosa, the poor man?s food?.

The targeted customer may be the poor but that has not stopped others from tasting Muni Reddy?s dosa. ?I have also heard about it and have tasted it sometimes. It is not a business gimmick,? the chief minister said.

?What is wrong if someone does a good thing for the poor?? he asked.

As for profits, Muni Reddy says he has not suffered any loss from the dosas, a three-times-larger version of which sells for Rs 15 apiece in Hyderabad.

?People who come to my hotel pay better rates for coffee, tea and other eatables,? he says.

Subsidised food, whether funded by sellers or government, is nothing new to Andhra Pradesh.

S.P.Y. Reddy, the Congress MP from Nandyal, has a business in mass-producing jawar roti in Kurnool district, which neighbours Kadapa.

?We sell almost 50,000 jawar rotis, made in special kitchens, all over the state on a cost-to-cost basis,? says the MP. He sells the poor man?s meal at Re 1 each against the market rate of Rs 3.

The roti campaign even earned him the parliamentary ticket and helped him win Nandyal, once represented by the late P.V. Narasimha Rao, former Prime Minister.

Supply of low-cost eatables had become a political rage when the late N.T. Rama Rao came to power in 1982.

The Telugu Desam Party founder had introduced Annapoorna hotels, a chain of government-run eateries that provided subsidised tiffin items.

?Meals were available at Rs 2.50 and idlis and vadas were sold at Rs 2 for a few days,? recalled E. Ayyapu Reddy, a former MP and a contemporary of the late leader.

The AP Hoteliers Association, however, revolted, forcing NTR to drop the project.

Some of the Annapoorna hotels still exist but no longer provide subsidised food.