Mohanlal Kapoor, a street vendor in north India, holds a card entitling him to subsidized food for his wife and four children. To get supplies, the Kapoors must battle an estimated 15 million families in their state toting similar pieces of paper that they’re not entitled to.
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To curb such abuses, which can add as much as 60 percent to what the government spends on wheat, grain and sugar, India is trying a new solution. In the past year, ration cards such as Kapoor’s laminated piece of paper with a glued-on or photocopied passport photo are being replaced with smartcards that hold biodata and can track food doled out in the world’s biggest distribution system for the poor.
Working on a state-by-state basis, the National Informatics Centre is spending 42 billion rupees ($684 million) over three years on computerized systems to monitor food from when the government buys it at the farm gate until it reaches the intended targets.
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Almost 60 percent of the more than $14 billion India plans to spend on wheat, rice and sugar for the poor this year is likely to go missing, if World Bank estimates prove accurate.
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In Uttar Pradesh, where poverty is on par with sub-Saharan Africa, about 35 percent of the state’s 44 million ration cards are held by ineligible people who bribe crooked bureaucrats to get them, said Ram Kumar, head of the Dynamic Action Group, a local human-rights organization. Nationwide, the objective for many is to manipulate the government’s welfare programs, whether it’s for food, water, kerosene or power, Kumar said.
Written proof that Kapoor is even entitled to receive food aid is almost untraceable, stacked along with the millions of other ration-card registrations at the state’s food ministry.
To confirm his allowance, Kapoor would depend on some of the same politicians and bureaucrats who pocket much of the 100 billion-rupee annual budget to feed India’s poorest and most-populous state, according to the August 2012 investigation by Bloomberg News.
The card “doesn’t mean anything if the supplies aren’t reaching this place,” Kapoor said. “Then who do I complain to? The people in charge are the ones looting us.”
anantjani.com 