Debabrata Mohanty Posted online:
Mon Aug 23 2010, 04:19 hrs
Bhubaneswar :
At a ration shop in Raygada, a town in the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput hunger zone of Orissa, a tribal hands over a smart ration card, a little larger than a PAN card, to the shopkeeper who swipes it in a card reader. The person then places his thumb on a scanner that has stored fingerprints of authorised users. The machine beeps, signalling an OK. Identity established, the shopkeeper hands him his quota of rice and an acknowledgement slip stating the quantity of ration drawn.
In a village miles away, another tribal draws his quota of rice and kerosene using a bar-coded coupon. His ration card has his photograph as well as those of his family members. He tears out a coupon — a strip of special paper with bar codes that can be scanned — from a bunch, hands it to the dealer and receives his quota of ration.
India’s much-maligned public distribution system is on the move in its heart of darkness. By November, Raygada district will have over a million people as part of a multi-modal biometric-enabled public distribution system, the first of its kind in the country.
The distribution of cards began on August 18 and the entire district will be covered by November. The project, a joint endeavour of the United Nations World Food Programme and Orissa government, could well be the answer to Targeted PDS.
In Orissa alone, there are an estimated 250,000 bogus ration cards. But with 13 biometric indicators — a photograph, two iris scans and ten fingerprints — the multi-modal ration card system has been able to weed out 12,000 bogus cards in one of the poorest districts. It ensures that only genuine beneficiaries take advantage of PDS.
Iris biometric technology was used in Andhra Pradesh five years ago but the technology provided could not go beyond a few thousand enrolments, resulting in duplicates and bogus ration cards.
“This is the closest to what we call corruption-proof PDS system. The system will weed out bogus cards that have become the bane of the PDS system,” said Ashok Kaluram Meena, Commissioner-cum-Secretary. “The multi-modal biometric system ensures de-duplication of ration cards as two indicators are better than one.”
The project, conceived by WFP in 2007, was started a year ago with Hyderabad-based 4G Identity Solutions Pvt. Ltd as technology partner. Using its 125-member team, the firm digitized old ration card registers and mapped these with the database of the 1997 BPL survey and 2002 household survey. The gram panchayat target beneficiary database was then transferred to some 6,000 enrolment stations in 2,445 villages, 41 wards and three urban local bodies where people queued up to get their biographic and biometric data recorded.
Data from enrolment stations were sent to the 4G data centre for aggregation where de-duplication was done using a multi-modal biometric engine to check for fake enrolments. A final database of unique card holders was generated and stored in a centralised citizen database. Rural households have been given laminated bar-coded ration cards and coupons since point-of-sale machines cannot be used in villages, several still without electricity.
People living in Raygada town were issued smart cards with embedded memory chips containing data of the beneficiary family. What makes the smart card unique is that it will be functional only when the beneficiary places his or her thumb on a fingerprint scanner.
During biometric capture, the biggest challenge was noise (poor quality of fingerprint images) as well as getting people to come to the enrolment centres. “In Raygada, tribals collect gum, so their fingers develop calluses. You cannot get the person to come to the centre time and again. So we used L1’s Daugman 2007 Iris Algorithm to remove the noise,” said B Srinivas Rao, 4G Vice-President (Business Development).
WFP Country Director Mihoko Tamamura is waiting to see how the programme makes the TPDS work. “We are still learning. The next one year will be crucial. If we succeed in Raygada, we can do it anywhere,” she said.
India’s much-maligned public distribution system is on the move in its heart of darkness. By November, Raygada district will have over a million people as part of a multi-modal biometric-enabled public distribution system, the first of its kind in the country.
The distribution of cards began on August 18 and the entire district will be covered by November. The project, a joint endeavour of the United Nations World Food Programme and Orissa government, could well be the answer to Targeted PDS.
In Orissa alone, there are an estimated 250,000 bogus ration cards. But with 13 biometric indicators — a photograph, two iris scans and ten fingerprints — the multi-modal ration card system has been able to weed out 12,000 bogus cards in one of the poorest districts. It ensures that only genuine beneficiaries take advantage of PDS.
Iris biometric technology was used in Andhra Pradesh five years ago but the technology provided could not go beyond a few thousand enrolments, resulting in duplicates and bogus ration cards.
“This is the closest to what we call corruption-proof PDS system. The system will weed out bogus cards that have become the bane of the PDS system,” said Ashok Kaluram Meena, Commissioner-cum-Secretary. “The multi-modal biometric system ensures de-duplication of ration cards as two indicators are better than one.”
The project, conceived by WFP in 2007, was started a year ago with Hyderabad-based 4G Identity Solutions Pvt. Ltd as technology partner. Using its 125-member team, the firm digitized old ration card registers and mapped these with the database of the 1997 BPL survey and 2002 household survey. The gram panchayat target beneficiary database was then transferred to some 6,000 enrolment stations in 2,445 villages, 41 wards and three urban local bodies where people queued up to get their biographic and biometric data recorded.
Data from enrolment stations were sent to the 4G data centre for aggregation where de-duplication was done using a multi-modal biometric engine to check for fake enrolments. A final database of unique card holders was generated and stored in a centralised citizen database. Rural households have been given laminated bar-coded ration cards and coupons since point-of-sale machines cannot be used in villages, several still without electricity.
People living in Raygada town were issued smart cards with embedded memory chips containing data of the beneficiary family. What makes the smart card unique is that it will be functional only when the beneficiary places his or her thumb on a fingerprint scanner.
During biometric capture, the biggest challenge was noise (poor quality of fingerprint images) as well as getting people to come to the enrolment centres. “In Raygada, tribals collect gum, so their fingers develop calluses. You cannot get the person to come to the centre time and again. So we used L1’s Daugman 2007 Iris Algorithm to remove the noise,” said B Srinivas Rao, 4G Vice-President (Business Development).
WFP Country Director Mihoko Tamamura is waiting to see how the programme makes the TPDS work. “We are still learning. The next one year will be crucial. If we succeed in Raygada, we can do it anywhere,” she said.
