The present study has attempted to assess and compare the amount of Aadhaar and non-Aadhaar based sale transactions of foodgrains through Fair Price Shops (FPS) since the inception of the “Annavitran” web portal across comparable Indian states in order to study the transparency in the accessibility of foodgrains to the ration card holders under the Public Distribution System (PDS) in India. The data under the present study pertains to FPS sale transactions from October, 2017 to April, 2018 on sixteen comparable Indian states that is available on the “Annavitran” website, which is a national level FPS sale transaction portal maintained by Indian Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution. The results indicated that out of the sixteen Indian states, eight states, namely Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh recorded more than 50 per cent FPS Aadhaar based transactions on an average. Further, the state of Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Haryana and Telangana have recorded 100 per cent Aadhaar based distribution of foodgrains, thereby indicating that these states have achieved full transparency in foodgrains sale transactions, which has been facilitated by automation of fair price shops through mechanization (Electronic Point of Sale machines) and computerization. Therefore, it can be deduced that the automated FPS sale transactions through Aadhaar route results in transparency in the food distribution chain, which ensures that the foodgrains reaches the intended beneficiary in the context of attaining food security in India.
Aadhaar, Annavitran, Automated FPS Sale Transactions, Food Security
