Can UID save India’s PDS?

Ashok Kotwal, Milind Murugkar and Bharat Ramaswami have an insightful piece on food security, where they implore for a new leadership and a fresh focus on the topic:

"There is no issue that is more significant in its moral implications and in the magnitude of its political impact than the issue of food security. And yet the present course of the national Food Security Bill is headed in a direction that does not bode well for the poor in India. The National Advisory Council (NAC) would like near-universal coverage but insists that it be delivered through the public distribution system (PDS). The Rangarajan Committee, set up to review the NAC recommendations, would like to scale it down on the grounds that it’s not viable. It says the government would be unable to procure so much grain and the subsidy required would be unaffordable too. All of this is under the assumption that the subsidy continues to be delivered through the PDS.

What is proposed is the worst of all possible worlds — a continuation of limited coverage under a wasteful system. Once again we are on the brink of creating another expensive token that will leave a vast number of the poor without the cover of food security. The act will be passed. But the poor won’t notice much change in their lives."

Like most public-welfare schemes run by the Government, the PDS is a case study in waste, corruption and inefficiency. In its 2005 report, India’s planning commission reported that for every Rs 4 spent on the PDS, only Rs 1 reaches the poor and 57% of the PDS food grain did not reach the intended people. Many observers have suggested the use of Aadhar IDs – India’s Universal Identification (UID) Project – to prevent the leakages in PDS.

A report by the UID project admits that ‘targeting is not serving its real purpose, as the beneficiaries do not get food grains in accordance with their entitlements.’ The report states a number of UID-based and technology-assisted solution to bypass the flaws inherent in the system, including creating a beneficiary database and tracking individual  beneficiaries.

Read the academics’ article here, and read the UID-PDS report here.

PS: This article mentions Milind Toravane, the district collector of Godhra, who used ‘technology to destroy a transporter-storekeeper nexus and save the district about R3 crore every month.’