• Tahir Showkat Bazaz
• Najamul Saqib
• Zubair Ahmad Shah
• Elahee Mohammad
• Monisa Nazir

Food Rationing or the Public Distribution System (as called in India) over the years has not only helped in stabilizing food pricing but has also contributed towards avoiding hunger and famine by supplying food from surplus regions of the country to the deficient ones. Moreover, this system of minimum support price and procurement has also contributed to increase the food grain production. However, despite the granaries being full, instances of hunger and poor quality of entitlements occur frequently. This points to certain lacunae or inefficiency in the system. The GOI has distributed the households based on their socio-economic status as Above Poverty Line (APL), Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Anthyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) to distribute the PDS entitlements. Irrespective of the strict classifications the system is dysfunctional. While studying the performance and problems of the public distribution system, particularly in India, it has been assessed that the major problems lie in the mortgaging of ration cards, poor quality of entitlements, corruption, rural and urban bias and poor performance of fair price shops. PDS shop owners in collusion with government officials divert the subsidized food supply and petroleum to the black market. The weight of the material (food) may be inaccurate due to human mistakes and if not bought within the stipulated time till the end of the month, they sale to others without any intimation to the government and customers. In order to overcome the problems in the system, a Smart Public Distribution System is proposed that with the help of digital recognition, precisely RFID’s, uniquely identifies each consumer along with the concerned rationing thereby striking out the drawbacks in the system. An RFID tags is provided to the customers instead of ration cards. The people have to show the card before the scanner and it communicates with the microcontroller there by with the server, which shows complete details of the customer. The microcontroller is attached with the load cell and a dedicated liquid submersible pump for kerosene. Load cell measures the required quantity of item for a customer automatically and similarly the kerosene is pumped by the liquid submersible pump and poured in the customer’s vessel. As everything happens automatically there is no chance of irregularity.

Public Distribution System, Arduino Mega, GSM Module, Load Cell, Submersible Pump, Liquid Monitoring Sensor

"Digitalization Of Food Rationing", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 3, page no.78-83, March-2019, Available :http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1903A10.pdf

"Digitalization Of Food Rationing", International Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (www.jetir.org | UGC and issn Approved), ISSN:2349-5162, Vol.6, Issue 3, page no. pp78-83, March-2019, Available at : http://www.jetir.org/papers/JETIR1903A10.pdf