Digitalisation of welfare programmes and its effective delivery to older adults: A case of DBT in PDS at Puducherry

This study was conducted to find out the effectiveness of the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Programme in satiifying older adults’ food needs. For this purpose out of about 377 Public Distribution System (PDS) shops only 20 shops, 10 from urban areas and 10 from rural areas were selected for this study From each shop 8 older adult respondents, a total of 160, were selected randomly for data collection. However, 8 respondents were omitted because of a lack of required data, and therefore, a total of 152 elderly respondents were finally selected for the study. An interview schedule was used for data collection. The study revealed that rural older adults have higher odds of preference for food rations as compared to urban counterparts. Scheduled caste older adults have higher odds of preference for food rations as compared to ‘other’ categories. The daily wage labour has higher odds of preference for food rations as compared to other job categories. These findings stress a careful policymaking is required on food security concerns of older adults.