The Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs department in the State is busy trying to implement the Food Security Act successfully by digitising the entire public distribution system chalking out the fake ration cards to make way for handing out food to the poorest people in the State by mid next year.
Special Secretary of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs Ravi Ranjan said that the system will soon be under complete control as it is being digitised. “By June-July 2016, all ration cards will be linked to the Aadhar number and this will help us plug all leakages in the ration distribution system that has been a cause of concern for the longest time. By far, the department has linked 28 lakh ration card-holders with their Aadhar numbers to put an end to duplicity. Once the processing is complete, beneficiaries will have to collect their share of food grain through the Aadhar-based biometric hand-held devices from the PDS shops,” said Ranjan.
About 23.22 lakh families in the rural areas continue to live below the poverty line. According to the national Sample Survey, 10.46 per cent of all households in the State face seasonal food insecurity. After several incidents of food distribution through fake ration cards surfaced recently and this year’s drought staring at the poor farmer’s faces that is also staring at even difficult times ahead of them next year, bridging the gap between the distribution and receipt of the ration in the hands of the poor seems like a major task in hands of the department.
The State had rolled out the National Food Security Act (NFSA) on October 1, entitling a total population of 2.33 crore to 5kg of rice and wheat every month at a subsidized rate of Rs 1 only to find out the loopholes at several levels in the system after several incidents of multiple fake ration cards being issued to the same person emerged. This seemingly created a pool of dilemma for dealers under the Public Distribution System and to plug the gap, the department has urged the ineligible beneficiaries to withdraw their names from the scheme by December 31, which has been now extended up to January 31 or face legal action.
Apart from the seeding of Aadhar numbers to the ration cards, bank account and mobile number updates, biometric hand-held devices for dealers, GPS-connected PDS special trucks, SMS alerts for dealers appears to be few corrective measures to plug leakages in the system. The special secretary also mentioned that there is an urgent need of procuring about 22,000 biometric hand-held devices for the State. “The technical evaluation is being carried out of the devices and then will the financial evaluation begin for the tender, which will take a months’ time. Soon after, the devices will be distributed to the concerned dealers in 45-60 days,” said Ranjan.
Deputy Secretary of the department Alok Trivedi said that the bank account details of the dealers is a mandate now under the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme (DBT) to ensure there is full transparency in the transaction. “If we transfer the required amount of money to the dealer’s account in various rural villages, we need to exactly know the complete details about the funds’ utilisation. We are under the process of collecting the bank account details from the villages across the state but cannot comment on the completion of the same,” said Trivedi.
Trivedi said that the DBT is still far from implementation because of the hurdles faced in doing the same. “There are many obstacles in the way of implementing the DBT scheme in the state and only Chandigarh and Pondicherry has been able to implement the same. Thus, we have already begun the study of the model of both the cities to understand the scheme better. We have sent a proposal to start the implementation of the same in Ramgarh. There is another proposal on distributing kerosene linked with the DBT scheme in five districts—Hazaribagh, Giridih, Jamtara, Khunti and Chatra as a piolot project first. We are just awaiting the Centre’s nod on both the proposals,” added Trivedi.
However, the department is open to people’s suggestions and has urged several Non-government organizations (NGO) to come up with strategies to overcome the hurdles to ensure the smooth functioning of the public distribution system of food in the state. According to the Special Secretary, already several suggestions have started pouring in urging the government to distribute pulses and edible oil keeping in view the rising malnutrition level among women and children in the remotest villages.