[ONORC] One Nation One Ration Card Scheme

One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) Scheme

• The ONORC scheme attempts to address this gap in Targeted Public Distribution System delivery.
• The scheme will ensure all beneficiaries especially migrants to access PDS across the nation from any PDS shop of their own choice.
• Under the one nation, one ration card’ initiative, eligible beneficiaries would be able to avail their entitled foodgrains under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) from any Fair Price Shop in the country using the same ration card.

Beneficiaries:

• The main beneficiaries of the scheme are the country’s migrant workers. According to data from the Census 2011, there are more than 45 crore internal migrants in India.
• Apart from this, field studies estimate that four crore to ten crore people are short-term migrants, often working in cities, but not moving there permanently.
• Women who change locations after marriage also find it difficult to start accessing ration benefits using a new household’s card.

Infrastructure:

• It involves the creation of a central repository of NFSA beneficiaries and ration cards, which will integrate the existing databases maintained by States, Union Territories and the Centre.
• Aadhaar seeding is also important as the unique biometric ID will be used to authenticate and track the usage of ration by beneficiaries anywhere in the country.
• It is critical that all fair price shops are equipped with electronic point-of-sale machines (ePoS), replacing the old method of manual record-keeping of transactions with a digital real-time record.
• The Food Corporation of India’s Depot Online System is integrating all warehouses and godowns storing subsidised grain in an attempt to create a seamless flow of online information from procurement until distribution.
• A standard format for ration card has been prepared after taking into account the format used by different states and after consultation with other stakeholders.
• The standardised ration card includes the requisite minimum details of the ration card holder and states can add more details as per their requirement.
• For national portability, the state governments have been asked to issue the ration card in bi-lingual format, wherein besides the local language, the other language could be Hindi or English.
• The states have also been told to have a 10-digit standard ration card number, wherein first two digits will be state code and the next two digits will be running ration card numbers.
• Besides this, a set of another two digits will be appended with ration card number to create unique member IDs for each member of the household in a ration card.