The Delhi Golf Club in the heart of New Delhi is a superb piece of real estate. Dotted with medieval monuments, it’s a defining part of New Delhi.

It’s also a hangout of the rich and the powerful – the mandarins, the judges and the corporate elite – a cosy bunch using these 179 acres of prime, prime land in the heart of India’s capital.

This tightly-controlled, membership-based Club pays, hold your breath, Rs. 5.82 lakh as annual rent to the government every year. A Right to Information reply published in the Hindustan Times newspaper last week valued the land at, hope you are still holding your breath, at Rs. 46,772 crore.

So, this Club actually pays a rent of Rs. 48,500 per month for a piece of land, whose per acre value is just over Rs. 260 crore. You won’t get a three-bedroom apartment in an upmarket South Delhi colony for 50 grand a month.

Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against golfers. Or, generating employment for caddies, cooks, managers and other catering staff – nothing at all.

But, me, even with my limited arithmetic, knows that the value of the land and the rent being paid don’t match up. The rent should be much, much more. Say, a minimum of Rs. 500 crore per year? A new rent would also mean increased membership fees.

It’s highly unlikely given the cosy nexus that operates that the annual rent will go up. To think otherwise would be naive.

But, just for a moment, my mind has begun to wander. Could the government turn this land into a vast, public park, open to all? Especially since the adjoining Lodhi Gardens is getting quite crowded?

Growing up in Delhi in the 1970s, we were told that all the slums and their dwellers were moved during Indira Gandhi’s authoritarian emergency rule in 1975-77 to far-away “Khichripur”. The Golf Club, could say, be moved somewhere out to New Khichripur, perhaps?

The Golf Club in Delhi is the ultimate form of subsidy. And, the rich and powerful are complicit, indeed quiet conspirators, in extending this subsidy to the rich and the powerful.

It’s also quite possible that those enjoying a drink or dinner, after or before a game of golf, will be complaining bitterly against the government for continuing subsidies to the poor – and in fact adding to them.

Now, let’s shift the scene to another part of Delhi – Tughlakabad.

The whole of last week thousands of people thronged the local Sub-Divisional Magistrate’s office looking for “forms”. At one point, the police had to wield the danda to disperse the crowds inside the SDM’s office.

Outside, one could see a few thousand persons, a vast majority of them women, sitting in the park, awaiting their turn to obtain and then submit the “form”.

So, what was all the fuss about?

The Delhi Government had begun implementing the National Food Safety Bill that provides millets, wheat and rice @ Re. 1, 2 & 3 per kilo to every member of an eligible household under a new and expanded public distribution system.

And, the crowds wanted to register for the new scheme.

The scheme, first introduced through an ordinance and now passed by Parliament, will cover 813 million Indians, a massively ambitious exercise whose merits and demerits have been much debated. Sixty-seven per cent of India – 75 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban – is to be covered by this scheme.

There’s little doubt in my mind that this is the best piece of legislation the Sonia Gandhi-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) has passed during its second term. And, speaking for myself, I have no problem with its motivations – populist, electoral or otherwise.

The scene at the SDM’s office in Tughlakabad, which unfortunately didn’t make it to the newspaper editions or television screens, is a powerful reminder that India’s electorate wants food grain at a subsidised rate.

By Thursday, the chaos at the SDM’s office had reduced. Like any other government scheme, this will continue to be marked by chaos and problems. But that’s no reason not to go ahead with it.

Conversations with a few people in the crowd indicate that the scheme might even bring electoral benefits to a Congress party, which had little to cheer about until last week.

Between the subsidy for golf and grain, no prizes for guessing where my sympathies lie.