NEW DELHI: The food ministry on Thursday launched the ‘Anna Chakra’, a tool for optimising the supply chain of foodgrains under the PDS across states, which is estimated to save around Rs 250 crore per year in the annual cost of transporting free wheat and rice for 80 crore poor people. Citing the implementation of the pilot project across 30 states and UTs, the govt claimed that route optimisation from FCI godowns to ration shops reduced the distance by 15-50%.
Developed in partnership with the World Food Programme and IIT-Delhi, the system leverages advanced algorithms to optimise foodgrain movement across the country’s logistics network.
Launching the tool, Union food and consumer affairs minister Pralhad Joshi said it was yet another step of using technology for plugging leakage and saving public exchequer while highlighting the govt’s achievement of direct benefit transfer by opening more bank accounts (JAM).
Union food secretary Sajneev Chopra said with this initiative a “drastic” change has been made to the “age old practice which had been continuing without any re-examination”. He said many times due to inertia or indifference, some things continue without examination or being revisited. “That has been changed today with regard to the supply routes taken by trucks and vehicles carrying foodgrains from FCI godowns to state godowns and fair price shops (FPS),” he added.
The initiative covers nearly 4.4 lakh FPS and 6,700 warehouses, targeting the country’s food security programme. Chopra said in the second phase, the optimisation of the supply chain will be from mandis to FCI warehouses, state warehouses and FPS.
Besides improved efficiency and cost savings through the streamlined delivery routes reducing fuel consumption, time, and logistics costs, it also provides environmental benefits of lower carbon footprint due to reduced transportation-related emissions.
Joshi also launched the SCAN portal, a single-window system for states to submit and process food subsidy claims, promising streamlined workflow automation. This is expected to facilitate expeditious settlement processes and the portal will ensure end-to-end workflow automation of all the processes for release and settlement of food subsidy using rule-based processing.
