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In India, the cumbersome Public Distribution System (PDS), which sells grain and sugar procured at subsidized prices from areas with surpluses, has many flaws. A combination of social needs, a productivist approach, and vested interests explain why the PDS persists in India—despite economic liberalization and the partial withdrawal of the State. There is also the fact that the ideal behind the PDS corresponds to two different but overlapping conceptions of national territory. Both the Hindu (nationalist) concept of territoriality, based on cardinal points and their relationship, and the modernist Nehruvian idea, based on integration through economic flows, correspond to a circulation-based concept of national space. Both factors contribute to the PDS.