Smart Ration Card Using RFID and Biometrics

Information Technology

India’s Public Distribution System (PDS) is the largest retail system in the world. Public distribution system provides a ration card issued under an order or authority of the State Government for the purchase of essential consumer materials like rice, wheat, kerosene and oil. State Government issues distinctive ration cards like yellow ration card, saffron ration card, and white ration card depending on family annual income. The consumer material is supplied to ration card holders in the first week of every month by ration shopkeeper. Public Distribution System is one of the widely controversial issues that involve malpractice. The manual intervention in weighing of the materials leads to inaccurate measurements and/or it may happen, the ration shop owner illegally uses consumer materials without prior knowledge of ration card holders. The proposed system aids to control malpractices which are present in ration shop by replacing manual work with automatic system based on RFID. Every consumer i.e. family head provided RFID card which acts as ration card. The RFID card has unique identification number. The consumer scans the card on RFID reader which is interfaced with microcontroller kept at ration shop. Once consumer is validated by details, the system shows customer’s product and cost. Based on material chosen by consumer, appropriate circuitry will be activated and consumer gets material through dummy Payment gateway. The proposed RFID based automatic ration shop system would bring transparency in public distribution system and become helpful to prevent malpractices.

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