If the market price of wheat is Rs. 30, and the old system was that the ration shop used to sell it at Re. 1 + the ration coupon, then the value of the coupon was Rs. 29.
If the new system was that you put Rs. 29 into everyone's bank account, then well maybe the ATM is a longer walk than the shop etc. But if the new system is to give people only Re. 1 then no wonder there's a riot!
Am I reading your [1] correctly? The problem is a 30-fold reduction in subsidy, not a new delivery infrastructure?
But while earlier it was just a walk to the shop and getting your ration card stamped, now you must:
1. Go to your bank (which may not even have a branch in your village)
2. Hope that the network is up
3. Confirm that the money has reached your account. If not, go home and retry (1) on another day
4. Withdraw the money and then go buy your ration at the subsidy shop
Edit: This the relevant quote from the article:
>Earlier, people would take their ration cards [...] and be able to purchase rice at Re 1/kg, with each member of a priority household allotted five kg. Now, [...] – money is first transferred into each household’s Aadhaar-linked bank account. They have to then withdraw this as cash, take it to the local ration dealer and buy rice at Rs 32/kg – of which Re 1/kg comes from the ration card holder [and the rest comes from the subsidy that you withdraw as cash].
Sounds like a massive business opportunity for banking. Your village may not have an ATM but I bet it has cellphone signal. Wasn't every Kenyan SMS-ing money around a decade ago?
The Kenyan-SMS has also led to a monopoly of mpesa in the market, which the RBI is trying to avoid by bringing some decent regulations in the space of digital banking.
>the real difference is felt by that poor man who is finally getting what was due to him.
The poor man was screwed by the middleman earlier (aadhaar does not solve quantity fraud - your fingerprint matching does not guarantee that the shopkeeper gives you exactly 5kg of your quota of ration) and continues to be screwed by the middleman. At the same time, the DBT scheme has seen intense opposition from people on the ground.
>According to a press note issued by the campaign, Rai did not deny the results of the survey that said 97% of people are unhappy with the new system.
Rai here is Jharkhand’s food minister Saryu Rai
Daily Wage laborers have been most impacted by DBT[1] in their ability to get benefits timely because of exclusion issues with aadhaar, but the government keeps marking these figures off as "savings".
[0]: https://medium.com/karana/lpg-savings-due-to-aadhaar-is-only...
[1]: https://thewire.in/rights/jharkhand-nagri-ration-pds-direct-...