Karnataka - Mysore   

A smart way to check hoarding of foodgrains

MYSORE: A “smart” way has been found to check black-marketing and hoarding of foodgrains and other essential commodities by fair price shops.

The age-old public distribution system (PDS) is set for a major revamp in the State with the Government of Karnataka proposing to introduce smart cards to owners of over 20,000 fair price shops. It is perhaps for the first time in the country that smart cards are given to the shops.

The Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, which has been cracking down on hoarding and black marketing of food grains and kerosene meant for public distribution, is gearing to provide smart cards to shop owners to ensure “cent per cent” distribution of essential commodities to the beneficiaries.

“There have been complaints from consumers that the monthly quota of foodgrains and kerosene was not reaching them fully, despite the government releasing the quota to the shops. The quota sometimes never reached the shops from the warehouses and is allegedly diverted to the black market. To overcome this, a system is being established wherein the shop owners should compulsorily store monthly quota in the shops and distribute the complete quota to consumers,” said Food and Civil Supplies Commissioner Shivaram.

Mr. Shivaram told The Hindu that biometric and radio frequency identification (RFID) supported hand-held billing system was being installed in fair price shops and kerosene dealers to facilitate functioning of ‘smart card’ system.

He said the shop owner should swipe his or her smart card in a portable or fixed terminal that comes with the system and also the biometric card of the consumers, to handle transactions.

“The system will be designed in such a way that the shop’s licence number, consumer number and his or her monthly eligibility will be displayed on the screen. After the transaction is done, a coupon deducting the quantity from the existing stock in the shop will be issued, showing the remaining balance of stock. The transaction is recorded in a central server installed at the department’s head office in Bangalore for cross-checking. The smart card works only when the entire stock of grains and kerosene is stored in the shop,” he said.

Mr. Shivaram said the proposed system would ensure that the shop owners do not misuse the stock allotted to them since the monthly transactions’ report will be available from the server.

According to him, cards with biometric (fingerprint) authentication and photographic identification, the two new methods of identifying genuine beneficiaries, would be issued to the consumers and the work of taking photographs of the consumers was under progress. “A provision is being made to have the fingerprint authentification of not only the head of the family on whose name the card will be issued, but also of his wife or son or a daughter for the convenience of collecting their quota if the card holders are unable to collect quota on their own,” he said.

Mr. Shivaram said smart cards and the supporting device would be supplied to 20,000 fair price shops in the State.

“The shop owners have to bear the price of installing the system which is not very expensive, and they can recover the investment collecting a nominal fee of Re. 1 from the consumers every month until they recover the investment,” he said.

The Department was looking for reputed and experienced agencies to develop and supply smart cards along with hand-held billing system, back-end software for authentification; transaction handling in online and offline mode; connectivity to the servers for data synchronisation and software for reporting and decision — supportive systems with security are included in the system.

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