No money in ATMs: Gujarat’s fair price shops double up as cash vendors

JASPUR: Around 6 pm when Dinesh Prajapati’s wife asks for ₹5,000, he isn’t worried about arranging cash despite the fact that the lone bank in their village Jaspur in Gandhinagar district has closed for the day. He goes to the village fair price shop to “withdraw” the amount.

Using Dinesh’s Aadhaar card number, which is linked to his bank account, and matching his thumb impression, shop owner Amrutbhai Prajapati transfers the amount to his account from Dinesh’s. He closes the transaction by handing over ₹5,000 in cash to Dinesh.

“I used DigiPay on the Common Service Centre (CSC) portal. All nationalised and private banks are linked to the portal,” Amrutbhai tells HT.

But Amrutbhai’s fair price shop isn’t the only one of its kind in Gujarat. Since January, the state government has provided access to this portal to over 17,000 fair price shops under public distribution system (PDS) across the state. A host of services like booking bus tickets, mobile recharge, DTH recharge and cash withdrawal can be availed through this portal, which was launched by the UPA-II government to provide various e-services to people in rural India.

Post-demonetisation, the NDA government added PDS to the CSC ambit for distribution of wheat, rice (under Food Security Act) and other rationed commodities, like kerosene to the beneficiaries through a cashless system. Gujarat has become the first state to introduce this.

“Gujarat already had barcoded ration cards to check pilferage. Now, the facility of cashless PDS has been introduced. All that a beneficiary needs is a bank account linked to his Aadhar number,” says M K Das, principal secretary, Food, Civil Supply and Consumer Affairs Department.

The system has been installed in almost all 18,000 villages of Gujarat, which has over one crore beneficiaries.