India fast-tracks digitalisation of its food security programme amid economic downturn

NEW DELHI - The drastic economic fallout of the Covid-19 pandemic has fast-tracked an ongoing Indian government effort to digitalise its food security system and introduce portability for its beneficiaries.

The ONORC allows its beneficiaries to draw their share of food grains from a fair-price shop anywhere in India by providing their ration card number, and thumb impression or or a scan of the iris, that is verified against the country’s national Aadhaar database.Minister for Food and Public Distribution Ram Vilas Paswan tweeted on Aug 1 that the ONORC network had been expanded to cover 24 states, a move that would benefit more than 650 million individuals, including inter-state migrant workers.

"There is an urgency to this issue because there are so many field reports that indicate food consumption has gone down among people," said Dr Dipa Sinha, an assistant professor at the School of Liberal Studies at Ambedkar University. There are also numerous challenges the government will have to overcome so that the ONORC system works effectively. This includes ensuring supply networks are able to respond to a sudden increase in demand for food grains at any one location because of an increased influx of migrant workers.

There also are concerns that millions of potential beneficiaries remain excluded from the public distribution system, according to an April study by academics Jean Drèze, Reetika Khera and Meghana Mungikar.

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