Questions/Answers

National Food Security Act (NFSA) is targeted to provide affordable, healthy and nutritious food to low income groups of the poorest and most vulnerable rural and urban population at subsidized rate, through inclusive services. Main objectives of AePDS under NFSA is to identify real beneficiaries and ensure the benefits reach them using technology to provide a transparent system to track and manage the entire system. To guarantee authentication and authorisation at G2G, G2C, G2B and to revoke any kind of food hoardings, over-pricing of food grains, leakages, to ensure food grains distribution in time, in right quantity, quality and to provide • Dignified life: Empowering the beneficiary to know his/her entitlement, commodity prices, stock position and availing ration with accurate weight at any Fair Price Shop (FPS) across the state through portability. • Right to Food: Distribution of food grains to poorest of the poor, old, diseased, bedridden , Mid-day Meal (MDM) to school children, Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) to fulfill nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating women and children below 5 years, Hostels and Akshayapatra centres . • Eradicate Malnutrition : Commodities include Double fortified salt, sugar, red gram, oil, ragi, millet, wheat, ensuring nutritional value.

Delivering inclusive and equitable services to leave no one behind The initiative, first of its kind in the country, meets all the criteria for the category. - Innovative Aadhar based authentication to identify genuine beneficiaries, ensuring benefits reach poorest - Woman chosen as head of family. - empowering the beneficiary through SMS, mobile App to know entitlements, Shop stock position and draw ration from any shop of his choice - inclusion of Aged or sick Beneficiaries through VRO. - Partial drawl of ration possible when some family members migrate for livelihood. - Scheme wise identification of families where poorest of poor given AAY cards, single women member cards given AAP cards - Transperancy ensures tracking - strong grievance redressal system

• Goal2: Zero Hunger –food at no or affordable cost. • Goal3: Good Health and Well-Being – distribution of nutritious food grains for all schemes 1. NFSA-PDS over 4.3 crore population, 2. ICDS - 35 Lakh including pregnant, lactating women and infants 3. MDM : Over 36 Lakh Children getting nutritious food in their growing age. 4. Hostels –over 5 Lakh students 5. Free Festival Food twice a year • Goal4: Quality Education – Under MDM, providing Nutritions food has increased enrollment • Goal5: Gender Equality – Under NFSA, head of a family is female member above 18 years of age. • Goal10 : Reduced Inequalities serving gigantic volume of population of more than 4 crore in an equal manner.

The initiative has positive impact, ensuring food security to over 4 crore population every month, 2.7 lakh pregnant, 2.9 Lakh lactating women, 28 Lakh infants and 36 Lakh school children of AndhraPradesh. The entire process flow is end-to-end from Government Of India to beneficiary and back. The shortfalls including bogus cards, duplicate members (Over 20 Lakh) were removed through Aadhar and 6 step validation. End to end computerisation resulted in stopping diversions, leakages, underweighment, manipulated stock registers, improper storages, delayed stock movement, Lack of billing, mismatch of procurement-offtake and disbursement of stock, FPS dealer denying receiving stock, FPS dealer denying availability of stock. The initiative made PDS transparent, trackable in real time, automated allocation and closing balances, entire distribution completing within the month, facilitating Digital payments, vehicle tracking with GPS enabled vehicles. Door delivery of food grains to Bed ridden, old, sick, ensuring no one is left behind. Following figures (November) indicate high volume of the project : Cards : NFSA : 95,20,392, State : 49,43,192, totaling 1,44,63,584 Members : NFSA : 2,74,69,623, State : 1,41,24,565, totaling 4,15,94,188 Shops : 29,687 Rice, Quintals: PDS : 1909579.20 ICDS : 33304.90 MDM : 79927.19 Redgram, Kgs: PDS : 6874227.10 ICDS : 711700.00 Sugar, Kgs: PDS : 6235774.08 Salt, Kgs: PDS : 330948.00 ICDS : 98010.00 WheatFlour, Kgs: 2029505.00 Jowar, Kgs: 1845664.00 Ragi, Kgs: 2889948.10 Palmolein Oil Litres: 392903.00

AePDS is the first of its kind in the country 1. Beneficiaries are identified with unique UID. 2. Inclusion for aged, sick Beneficiaries unable to authenticate is through VRO, who authenticates, draws and delivers to the beneficiary through authentication. 3. Beneficiary is empowered through SMS, Moble app, transparency portal and help desk . 4. Portability feature enables anywhere ration. 5. Accurate weighment - Weighing machine connected with blue tooth to ePOS devices. 6. GPS vehicle tracking resulted in No diversion or pilferage of stock 7. Cashless transactions using Aadhar enabled Payment System (AePS) 8. Integrated with Neft payments by Dealers

All the innovation features are original and first of the kind in the country. The model is now being replicated in other states of India, Haryana, Maharashtra, Kerala etc. Technical Partner National Informatics Centre has designed a robust model with unique identification, cashless payment system using AePS bridge where beneficiary need not disclose his bank details. With Aadhar authentication, bank details are found at NPCI to complete the transaction. The application is developed using open source technologies and tuned to cater to more than 20 Lakhs of transactions per day, with thousands of concurrent transactions and with less than 1 minute of transaction time.

AePDS has been replicated in several other states of India like Haryana, Maharashtra, Kerala etc. As the project is a central government initiative the base project guidelines are same for all states across India . The commodities given in each state are state specific. State has its own cards other than NFSA cards. Each State has separate policy but distributed in the same method. The project covers both NFSA and state schemes. In all the application has a common policy for NFSA which is integrated with state specific policies. The application is replicated with a little modification in all states.

The project is funded by Government of India for infrastructure as well as human resource. The project is designed and developed by Technical Partners - National Informatics Centre, Prime Builder of eGovernance Applications of India, in open source technologies with very less cost component. No dependency on license upgradation.

The project has sustained as all stakeholders are benefited by this scheme. The government of India can easily monitor the scheme with transparency portal. Which is also accessible to the beneficiaries. DR is set up which ensures no down time. The project is continuously evolving with new features including cashless PDS under Digital India Initiative of GOI, which helped beneficiaries during demonetisation, the first of its kind in the country. Project has sustained due to huge savings to the Government, of more than Rs.2342 Crores since inception. Aadhaar is used as an unique identification which avoids duplicates and frauds. SMS and mobile apps are also provided for better message dissemination . The project is well taken by all stakeholders - by the poor and illiterate beneficiaries as they are sure of their benefits, Dealers getting dignity and department is happy with end to end computerisation ensuring complete transparency and accountability.

Yes

Regular third party (SSAAP) social audits are conducted. Real Time Governance Department conducts Calls, grievances collected through toll free number and IVRS is used to get response for Satisfactory level AP State Food Commission: reviews activities under the Food Security Act, like the essential commodities distributed through public distribution system, Quality and Quantity of commodities. Action is taken against people involved in misdeeds. Parliamentary Standing Committee and Ministry of Food and PDS conducts yearly audits on departmental activities. Legal Metrology department verifies and stamps the weights and measures. A P State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission addresses consumer disputes. Regular Central teams audit the system

Social audits and feedbacks are taken on accurate weighments, Biometric failures, Time taken for transactions, opening of shop and quality of commodities. Indicators include quality, quantity, Number of trips by Beneficiary to the shop to fetch their entitlement, Behaviour pattern of the shop keeper and local language support.

Based on the outcome, measures are taken to improve the satisfaction level. Weighment at godowns while dispatching and receiving at FPS is integrated with POS devices using bluetooth. Shop opening and closing is monitored through transparency portal and SMSs – Resulted in promptness and punctuality of dealers. Portability or Anywhere ration facility empowers beneficiaries to draw ration in any FPS improving the behaviour pattern of the Dealer. Failures reduced by including fusion finger and iris features. Inclusion for failures, old age and bedridden patients is done through Village Revenue Officer. Stock reaching in time reduced number of trips to avail ration. 81% satisfaction levels noticed at present by RTGS Survey, which is very difficult to reach in a high volume citizen-centric project.

The project is funded by Government of India and directly monitors the implementation. All the stakeholders were consulted and involved while designing and implementation of the system. Stakeholders include 1. Ration Card Beneficiaries and Citizens 2. AP FCS Department Officials 3. FPS Dealers 4. Women Development And Child Welfare Dept Officials 5. School Education Department Officials 6. GOI Officials – for monitoring the system, for state level allocation Regular training programmes, workshops and VCs are conducted to take requirements and feedback, which are applied to fine tune the system and make it user friendly. Modules developed by other agencies and departments, are seamlessly integrated using web services, like Dept of Women and Child and Dept of School Education. The department has a strong grievance monitoring system and food commission which makes regular inspections and audit to understand and resolve grievances.

1. End to end computerisation is to be done. 2. The system should benefit every stakeholder involved in the system 3. Capacity building brings confidence and is the key to success 4. Stakeholders involvement makes the system user friendly. 5. The system should use latest technologies and standards 6. Implementation should be in phase wise manner and designed keeping in mind future perspective and extensibility for sustainability. 7. The future perspective is to bring entire country under one umbrella with portability for easy monitoring. Many states have adopted this model. Number of countries have approached to study and implement similar system.