event
egov india 2010
ict for food security
India needs a clinical approach Sporadic uses of technology have been made but the system needs an end-to-end IT overhaul to get functioning-fit
(L - R) Amod Kumar, Director, Maternal & New Born Health Project, IHI; Ashok Kr Meena, Commissioner-cumSecretary, Food, Civil Supplies & Consumer Welfare, Orissa; Jayashree Raghuraman, Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Delhi; Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food & Civil Supplies, Andhra Pradesh (Chair); Srinath Chakravarthy, VP, NISG; Vilas Kanyal, Head Asia Pacific, Mastek
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he session was chaired by Sanjay Jaju, Commissioner, Food and Civil Supplies, Government of Andhra Pradesh saw panelists presenting update of their work on ICT for food security front. Talking about the initiatives by Orissa, the state Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Welfare Department Commissioner-cum-Secretary Ashok Kumar Meena said, “PDS is nothing but a supply chain, from production at the farm to procurement, from giving the minimum support price to farmers to keeping food grains in storage and distributing it to the districts and to the fair price shops (FPSs), from where it gets distributed finally to the targeted below poverty line (BPL) beneficiaries.” Meena also spoke on the biometrics-based ration cards pilot project of Rayagada district in Orissa, introduced in the year 2008, with the support of the World Food Program and Government of India. The project aimed at stopping wastage and fraud in PDS through use of biometric ration cards in order to better
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mation of information exchange between school authorities and the Department of Education. Jayashree Raghuraman, Secretary-cum-Commissioner, Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Government of NCT of Delhi, dealt with the challenges Delhi faced with regard to the identification of beneficiaries since it had issues like migration of people to Delhi from various states of India, movement within Delhi from one area to another, and shifting of people from BPL category to above poverty line population. She felt that ICT can be very effective in dealing with such issues. In this regard, the Department did a Biometric review of all existing BPL and AAY cards and deleted bogus cards. Vilas Kanyal, Head—Asia-Pacific, Mastek, was optimistic that the goal of “Food for All” could be met through use of ICT. India does have pilot projects and projects that are part of other program, but there is no end-to-end solution to tackle the ills of PDS. In this context, he provided an overview of Mastek’s ‘e-FCS’ solution that provided the advantages of a comprehensive solution, with a quick rollout time. The modules in this solution included ration card management system, backend supply chain system, issuance system, FPS management
Food grain provisioning needs to be viewed as a supply-chain activity that must have an MIS system for actionable review monitor and manage distribution of foodgrains. As per Sanjay Jaju, “The project has a lot of bearing on the biometric capture and ICT use that is gaining ground in the country”. Amod Kumar, Director, Maternal and New Born Health Project, Intra Health International, briefed on the IVRS-based daily monitoring system for mid-day meal (MDM) scheme in Uttar Pradesh. The lack of proper mechanism to monitor the implementation of the MDM scheme, prompted for a Web-based MIS for transporting data directly from school to the state. The school authorities can now inform the number of students availing meal on that day without any time lag and all reports can be viewed and managed in real time due to auto-
module, and budgeting and accounting system. Srinath Chakravarthy, Vice President, National Institute for Smart Government, informed about the computerisation of TPDS program of Department of Food & Public Distribution, Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, GoI to improve efficiency and effectiveness of the entire system. Government of India had engaged NISG to provide consultancy services in designing a comprehensive e-Governance framework at the central and state levels, formulating a set of solutions to be implemented. He advocated that beneficiaries should be able to get food grains from any FPS in India, using UID as a pan-India identifier.