In Tamil Nadu, info on PDS stock just an SMS away

CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu government has found an ingenuous way to outwit the neighbourhood ration shops that routinely turn away customers under the pretext that the outlet has run out of stocks. Soon, all that the ration card holders will need to do is send an SMS and the information on the availability of stocks in their respective PDS outlet will come to them within minutes.

"It is part of the step-by-step process towards total transparency in food distribution in the state,'' said K Shanmugam, food secretary.

Three months ago, the Tamil Nadu Civil Supplies Corporation (TNCSC) began using SMS to receive inputs on stock availability in each of the 28,000 ration shops across the state at the end of the day. The data thus received was stored in the central server. Now, the service would be made available to the nearly two crore card holders in the state.

"Until now, only officials were accessing the data. Now, the consumers can get the details too,'' said Shanmugam. The consumers will need to send an SMS starting with `PDS' followed by the district code (`01' for North Chennai) and the ration shop code printed on the lower portion of the front page in ration cards.

"Besides making the system transparent, the facility will help people know the stock before going to the ration shop,'' said a deputy commissioner of TNCSC in Chennai. For instance, senior citizens with white cards and entitled for sugar can send an SMS to know about the sugar stock in their ration shop to avoid straining themselves by walking to the shop, he pointed out.

As the ration cards have the district codes as well as the shop codes, it will be easy for the consumers to access information from a particular shop. But, the government has a request to consumers: utilise the SMS facility during the day time as the central server gets a bit clogged after 5 pm when the official data flow begins.