TRACKING MISUSE
PDS GOES SMART IN HARYANA………NAVNEET SHARMA
PDS GOES SMART IN HARYANA………NAVNEET SHARMA
The 1,600 families in Haryana’s Panchkula district which line up at fair price shops for foodgrains and kero- sene can do away with their prized ration cards, pieces of paper that entitle the poor to subsidized food and fuel.
Beginning Tuesday, while they still have to queue up, these families will receive their rations after a biometric identi- fication using smart cards.
Beginning Tuesday, while they still have to queue up, these families will receive their rations after a biometric identi- fication using smart cards.
That’s a small beginning for an ambitious Rs138 crore Cen- trally funded project aimed at checking leakages, curbing cor- ruption and ensuring need- based allocations in the public distribution system (PDS), In- dia’s oldest and largest social security scheme, on which the government will spend Rs55,578 crore over 2010-11.
Consumer affairs, food and public distribution minister Sharad Pawar launched the smart card project–the first of its kind for PDS in any state–through a video confer- ence at the national conclave of food secretaries of all states in New Delhi on Tuesday.
The government hopes to replicate the Panchkula pilot across the country, which strug- gles with a corrupt system where less than half the subsi- dized food meant for the poor actually reaches them.
For now, Haryana authorities hope to cover the entire state by end-2011.
Then Union finance minister P. Chidambaram had described Haryana as a willing partner when he announced the project in his budget for 2008-09. The state has 5.4 million ration card holders, including around 1.2 million of the poorest families under the Antyodaya Anna Yo- jana (AAY), receiving their ra- tions through some 9,600 fair price shops.
The cycle of corruption Like in most states, leakage and diversion of foodgrains and kerosene from the PDS is high in Haryana too. New Delhi-based think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) found in a study it did four years ago that about 40.6% of PDS kerosene is being divert- ed and finding its way into the black market or purchased by households without a card.
The cycle of corruption Like in most states, leakage and diversion of foodgrains and kerosene from the PDS is high in Haryana too. New Delhi-based think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) found in a study it did four years ago that about 40.6% of PDS kerosene is being divert- ed and finding its way into the black market or purchased by households without a card.
Around 4.2 million families in Haryana which hold ration cards and are above the poverty line, are entitled to 3 litres of kero- sene every month if they do not have a connection for a cooking gas cylinder. But there’s no sys- tem to ascertain whether they have gas connections or not and a sizeable portion of the kero- sene oil entitlement is diverted.
After two panels–headed by C. Rangarajan in 2006 and by B.K. Chaturvedi committee in 2008–recommended that sub- sidized kerosene be supplied only to poor families, the state government in September 2008 decided to stop supplying to non-poor families even if they did not have cooking gas con- nections. The decision was rolled back within days on hu- manitarian grounds. Kerosene leakage is even higher in Pun- jab, Delhi, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand.
Similarly, there is a huge di- version of wheat, rice and sugar from the PDS due to misuse and duplication of ration cards. According to some estimates, around 30% of the foodgrains and other commodities allocat- ed for poor families do not reach them.
In states like Haryana, which have surplus wheat and rice and where the poor get their share in crop from the landowners in lieu of working in the fields, the ration card holders deposit their cards with fair price shop own- ers and take cash or other items of daily use in place of their monthly entitlements, a food and supplies department official said, requesting anonymity. A number of ration shop owners also run grocery stores. And this makes diversion easier.
State authorities are confident the biometrics-based smart cards will help check such mal- practices and weed out fake and duplicate ration cards.
Roll-out plan We are in the process of en- gaging a system integrator from (the) private sector for setting up and maintaining infrastruc- ture, issuing smart cards, run- ning a call centre and carrying out back-end operations. Bids have been received and the company will (be) decided within the next few days, said Na- vraj Sandhu, financial commis- sioner and principal secretary, food and supply.
Roll-out plan We are in the process of en- gaging a system integrator from (the) private sector for setting up and maintaining infrastruc- ture, issuing smart cards, run- ning a call centre and carrying out back-end operations. Bids have been received and the company will (be) decided within the next few days, said Na- vraj Sandhu, financial commis- sioner and principal secretary, food and supply.
She said Ambala City, Gharaunda, Sonepat and Sirsa blocks would be taken up in the first phase of implementation, which is to be completed by Oc- tober. Test run results in Pan- chkula have been satisfactory.
There may be a few technologi- cal glitches initially, but we hope to learn from them and improve the system, she said.
There may be a few technologi- cal glitches initially, but we hope to learn from them and improve the system, she said.
The National Informatics Centre has developed the soft- ware and tested it to some ex- tent in Panchkula. Fingerprints of each member (above the age of 12 years) of beneficiary fami- lies would be stored in the smart card along with details of their monthly entitlement.
At fair price shops, a smart transaction terminal (STT) will be used to match the fingerprint records on the smart card with that of the consumer’s and au- thenticate the transaction.
All district offices and Food Corporation of India centres will be given STTs to make alloca- tions and to keep records of all transactions. At a later stage, transporters will be given simi- lar smart cards for delivering foodgrain and kerosene oil.
Linking Aadhaar After Chhattisgarh, where ra- tion card data has been compu- terized to ensure proper distri- bution and to check leakages, the Panchkula pilot is the first such experiment ahead of a na- tionwide PDS reform that Nan- dan Nilekani, head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, is pursuing.
Linking Aadhaar After Chhattisgarh, where ra- tion card data has been compu- terized to ensure proper distri- bution and to check leakages, the Panchkula pilot is the first such experiment ahead of a na- tionwide PDS reform that Nan- dan Nilekani, head of the Unique Identification Authority of India, is pursuing.
A.K. Gaur, deputy director in- charge of the Smart Card Proj- ect, said the smart cards would be compliant with the unique ID (UID) project called Aadhaar.
A decision has been taken in principle that fingerprints and iris scans of families holding raion cards will be taken for UID by the system integrator of our project while making smart cards. The bids were invited with and without iris scan costs, he said.
Re-Imagining India is a joint nitiative of Mint and the Hindu- stan Times to track and under- stand policy reforms that will, if hey are successful, change the very way in which India goes about its efforts to create an in- clusive and progressive country. WWW.LIVEMINT.COM For our earlier story on Chhattisgarh’s food revolution, go to www.livemint.com/ foodrevolution.htm To read the previous stories in this series, go to www.livemint.com/reimaginingindia