City Beautiful to get smart with biometrics

Siphoning off food and fuel meant for the poor has made India’s public distribution system (PDS) ineffective.

To get over the leakages, Chandigarh has hired the services of information technology (IT) companies.

The city has given a contract to a consortium headed by HCL to prepare 250,000 biometric cards, which would ensure grain and kerosene meant for the poor are not pilfered. The first of these cards would be issued in September.

With this, Chandigarh, the joint capital of Haryana and Punjab and also a Union Territory, would become the first city in the country to launch biometric cards for the PDS.

The scheme would eventually be extended to the whole of Haryana, that has allocated Rs 137 crore for the entire project. Several IT majors, including TCS and ITC Infotech, are in the running for the project. Haryana has an estimated 5.2 million beneficiary families.

Under the project, smart cards would be issued both to beneficiary families and the associated fair price shop (FPS) owners.

The card issued to a family would have biometric details of three of its members, any of whom could use it to buy grains at a subsidised rate from a designated FPS. The cards with the FPS owner would have details of all the beneficiary families attached to his shop.

State-owned Haryana State Electronics Development Corporation (Hartron), the nodal agency for implementing this project, would start collecting biometric details of the targeted families soon.

“It will not take us more than four-five months to launch the project in Chandigarh. We also hope to launch it across Haryana sometime later this year,” said an official at Hartron. The data and biometrics of the beneficiaries would be shared with the Unique Identification Authority of India, which aims to issue a unique identification numebr to each of India’s 100 crore-plus citizens.

At the other end of the system would be the district food and civil supply offices, FPS, Consumer’s Cooperative Wholesale Stores Ltd (CONFED) and Food Corporation of India (FCI) centres with a smart transaction terminal (STT), which looks identical to a credit card terminal.

Once a beneficiary approaches his designated fair price shop, his family card would be swiped at a smart transaction terminal. The member would be required to establish his identity by touching the machine with his finger. Once the authenticity is established, the terminal would print a slip mentioning details of the entitlement due to his family. Interestingly, the machine would also give the details in a voice (in the state language) so that even the uneducated consumers are made aware of their entitlements.

The member can then decide the quantity he wishes to purchase. The scheme also allows a consumer to carry forward his unused quota of food and fuel to the next month. In the current system, many fair price shop owners fake their records to show the consumer has lifted his entitlement. They then sell the unlifted portion into the market. The biometric system, which would be tamper proof, would also put a stop to this practice.

While the initial cost of the project is met by the central government, operating expenditure from the second year onwards would be borne by the state governments. The proposal to encourage states to launch smart card was announced by former finance minister P Chidambaram in his 2008-09 Budget.