Operational Impact of Technological Advancements in Public sector Supply chains-Evidence from India's Food Security Program

Large government managed public sector supply chains are often plagued with inefficiencies which undermine their effectiveness to deliver public goods. New technologies have the potential to improve delivery effectiveness by addressing these concerns. I study the impact of two such technology enabled interventions in the context of India's food security program, the Public Distribution System (PDS). The PDS is one of the largest food security systems of its kind in the world.
It delivers subsidized food grains to nearly 160 million low-income households through approximately 500,000 Fair Price Shops (FPS). There are many sources of inefficiency associated with the PDS { diversion of food grains at different
stages of the supply chain, beneficiaries not receiving their complete entitlement, FPSs not being open regularly, mistreatment of beneficiaries by the FPS owner, overcharging of grains etc. In order to address these issues, governments and policy makers have introduced multiple technology enabled interventions across the PDS supply chain such as digitisation of beneficiary records, implementation of biometric authentication devices, introduction of choice of FPSs, grievance redressal mechanism and transparency portals, etc. I study the operational impact of two process changes
in the downstream part of the PDS supply chain (monitoring at FPSs and collection of entitlements by beneficiaries), which were enabled by the technological intervention of introduction of biometric authentication devices.