The price of onion has soared to a record high, necessitating intervention of the government, which is selling the essential commodity at wholesale rates from fair price shops. Do you think your department has been able to control the situation?

No. In just one month, the price of onion per kg has shot up from Rs 26 to Rs 47, an increase of nearly 80 per cent. We have no control over this kind of price rise. Onions are coming from Nashik, Maharashtra. We are yet to get supply from Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. By the end of this month, we expect the availability of onions in those markets to increase and the situation to improve. Had the government of India stopped export of onions for a couple of months, the price would have stabilised. The state is trying to intervene at the retail point so that middlemen do not try to make profits unscrupulously.

What steps are you taking?

We are procuring onions directly from the wholesalers and selling them at fair price shops through our retailers. Our price is about Re 1 or Rs 2 more than the wholesale rate to cover the cost. This will continue till the end of this month.

Why is the state not arranging for storage facilities to control onion price rise, which has become an annual phenomenon?

The government of India removed onion and potato from the list of essential commodities before 2005, as they were not staple food. Now it includes rice, pulses, oilseeds, sugar and kerosene. The prices are monitored at four to five locations across the state and the report is sent to the Centre. However, as far as onion is concerned, we cannot do much because there is no declaration of prices, no control order. We are intervening as onion was earlier an essential commodity and people expect the government to come to their rescue. Our measures may have marginal impact but consumers will be saved from unscrupulous traders to some extent.

The state government is dissatisfied with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for poor evacuation of surplus rice from its godowns and wants it to make space for rice procured from the state. What is the current status?

Our requirement for public distribution system (PDS) and welfare schemes is about 22 lakh metric tonnes. But in the past five years, we are procuring surplus rice. Now it has reached to 37.6 lakh metric tonne. There is no way to sell it as it comes from the central pool. The FCI was procuring all the extra rice till 2003. After that, Odisha became a decentralised procurement state. As a result, our dependence on FCI reduced and we started procuring rice directly from farmers. However, FCI’s performance this year has been very good.

Will Odisha benefit from the Food Security Bill?

Odisha will not benefit much. Our total allocation will reduce marginally. However, we need to identify beneficiaries individually and not family-wise. Each individual will be allocated 5kg of rice, instead of the present 25 kg per family, irrespective of the number of members. Since the BPL survey is hopeless and the socio-economic survey is not ready, identification of individuals will take time.

When the Bill becomes an Act, will it reduce Odisha’s fiscal burden?

Once implemented, Odisha’s fiscal burden of Rs 1,300 crore because of the Re 1 rice-a-kg scheme will reduce by 50 per cent, which is around Rs 600 crore. However, the overall assessment is yet to be made.

Bhubaneswar was once said to be the emerging IT hub in eastern India. What is the current status?

We are on the right track. Mindtree will soon open its unit here while TCS has promised to expand its unit. We also hope that Infosys will expand. Export of IT software for 2012-13 is about Rs 1,960 crore.

Have you ever faced political pressure in your functioning?

I have never been under pressure to do something illegal.

What do you feel about Uttar Pradesh chief minister suspending IAS officer Durga Shakti Nagpal, who took on the powerful sand mining mafia in Noida? Have you come across a similar incident in Odisha?

There have been suspensions and transfers on many occasions. But nothing like the Durga Shakti case has taken place here. The morale of an officer has been blunted by an action, which appears illogical and illegal.

As an alumnus of the prestigious Sainik School, what do you feel about its present academic standard?

I am concerned about declining standards. In our time, we had a motivation for achievement, which is lacking among students now. This generation has access to television, the Internet and mobile phones, which might have had a distracting effect. Now parents have many options of schools. Moreover, Sainik School now charges Rs 30,000 to Rs 35,000 per annum, which is much more than the annual fees of many public schools.

Metallurgy to public service

Enterprising and practical, Madhusudan Padhi, 50, is a senior IAS officer in charge of two important departments — food supplies and consumer welfare, and information technology

Padhi, who hails from Bhadrak, studied at Sainik School in Bhubaneswar. Though he had qualified for IIT, he chose to pursue graduation from the Rourkela Engineering College (now National Institute of Technology, Rourkela) to be able to take up the subject of his choice — metallurgy. He worked at DHL for four months and then with the National Aluminium Company (Nalco), a Navratna public sector unit for close to five years before qualifying for the civil services

The 1991 batch officer has served as collector of Kandhamal, Balangir, Koraput and Khurda, in that order. He has headed the department of tourism and culture, school and mass education and higher education. He was also the state project director for the Odisha Primary Education Programme Authority

Padhi left for the US on a sabbatical in January 2011. After completing a course in public administration from Syracuse University, he returned to Bhubaneswar and soon after, got his present posting in the food supplies and consumer welfare department. He was home secretary for some time and was then moved to IT

Padhi is a tennis enthusiast. His wife is a college lecturer

WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE BEEN HAD YOU NOT BEEN AN IAS OFFICER

I was working with National Aluminium Company (Nalco) before joining civil services in 1991. Had I not qualified for the services, I would have continued there. I was never really interested in the IAS in my college days, but I opted for it because a job in industry was monotonous. The relationship between the supervisors and workers was becoming a little too difficult to adjust to. The management was not really keen to protect the officers. But that was just one of many factors that led me to prepare for the IAS and I got through in my second attempt