Lax digitisation of food subsidies slows reforms


Only 16 of 29 states and seven union territories had digitised the leaky ration-card system of the world’s largest programme to distribute subsidised food, the targeted public distribution system (TDPS), by the end of April 2015, according to the latest-available government data.
Nearly half of 55.45 million metric tonne foodgrain despatched for sale to more than 99 million families never reaches them, according to this 2015 paper (using 2011 data) by Ashok Gulati and Shweta Saini of the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations. Read Articles

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