{
  "id": 15978241,
  "title": "How to break the ration-shop monopoly in PDS",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/10/22/how-to-break-the-ration-shop-monopoly-in-pds",
  "topic": "world",
  "section": "World",
  "published": "2026-10-22T00:49:04.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Indian Express",
    "slug": "the-indian-express",
    "url": "https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/one-nation-one-ration-card-scheme-portability-beneficiary-empowerment-pds-10931406/"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "India's food safety net programme, reaching over half of the country's population, has traditionally operated through 5 lakh fair-price shops (FPS) tied to the cardholder's address. This geographic tie posed a significant issue, as migrants often moved without access to their allocated grain. The 2020 pandemic exposed this gap, leading to the 2020 One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) reform. ONORC introduced two key features: portability, enabling beneficiaries to collect their quota from any FPS using Aadhaar authentication, and divisibility, allowing entitlement to be split across multiple FPS. While the reform's designers assumed long-distance migrants would benefit most, analysis of 891 million transactions from Bihar since April 2022 reveals the opposite. 62% of transactions occurred at the assigned FPS, while 55% happened at a nearby FPS in the same block. Only 1% of transactions occurred outside the state. This data suggests the primary motivation for using alternative FPS is to reallocate bargaining power between dealers and beneficiaries, rather than addressing long-distance migrant needs. The share of portable transactions increased by roughly six percentage points annually since the reform's implementation, with type 1 portability (same-block FPS) being the dominant use case. ONORC has transformed the power dynamic between dealers and cardholders, giving the latter more bargaining power and the ability to threaten withdrawal if short-changed. Divisibility has been less widely used, possibly due to unawareness or dealer incentives. Despite this, ONORC has significantly altered the PDS landscape, potentially marking the largest welfare change in decades.",
  "summary": null,
  "key_points": [
    "2020 One Nation One Ration Card reform introduced portability and divisibility features.",
    "62% of 891 million Bihar transactions occurred at assigned FPS, not alternative locations."
  ],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}