ELIMINATING MIDDLEMEN
PDS link to help end corruption……..KAREN LEIGH
PDS link to help end corruption……..KAREN LEIGH
Beneficiaries of the public distribution system (PDS) will be able to use unique identity numbers as their sole identification in receiving PDS benefits, making the system more efficient and allowing it to reach marginal groups and larger numbers of poor residents.
In a report released on Wednesday, the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) said its programme, Aadhaar, would easily integrate into the PDS, and that using one identity would eliminate the rampant duplication in the system.
UIDAI, chaired by Infosys Technologies Ltd co-founder Nandan Nilekani, aims to provide a 12-digit number to at least 600 million Indians in the next four years.
For months, he has touted the programme’s ability to in- tegrate with and streamline existing government benefit programmes.
The PDS has been criticized for corruption and ineffi- ciency. Bribery is often needed to obtain a ration card and there is rampant open market reselling of goods meant for beneficiaries. Users often see portions of their rations di- verted to the black market through unregulated ration shop closures and overcharging and underweighing of goods by indifferent shop owners.
Aadhaar’s report said it would aim specifically to address ration diversions, food ration storage, timely distribution, and monitoring of PDS centres and food security.
In a move that would bring higher levels of technology to distribution, it said Aadhaar authentication at the delivery point would allow officials to transfer entitlements to recip- ients electronically.
Under an electronic Aadhaar system, grain allocation would be linked to a citizen’s unique identity number.
When the number is presented, that person would be given the amount specified by the system, eliminating the touts who swipe rations.
When the number is presented, that person would be given the amount specified by the system, eliminating the touts who swipe rations.
The PDS would then provide all beneficiaries with an on- line food account, enabling the government to directly communicate to them the details of their ration shares.
The trick, said Yamini Aiyar, senior research fellow and director of the accountability initiative at the Centre for Policy Research, will be how much they can ensure that the entire UID system is linked up with efforts on the ground to give people a sense of their own entitlements.
Aadhaar also wants to give recipients the right to choose their own fair price shops–the current set-up allocates us- ers to a location not of their choosing.
R.S. Sharma, UIDAI’s director general, said PDS officials had welcomed the plan and that he didn’t expect many hurdles. I don’t think it will be a great challenge for us in terms of integrating the numbers, he said. The challenge is in changing the PDS system, and that will have to be ad- dressed by them–everything will have to be monitored by PDS. We ourselves have a number of people trying to en- sure that the integration is simple.