The Lift Line

“The bargaining-power reallocation may be the largest welfare change PDS has seen in decades.” (Rahul Kumar Singh, Devesh Roy and Parul Varma, The Indian Express, 22 October 2026)

Why This Editorial Matters for Your Exam

In the news: Rahul Kumar Singh, Devesh Roy and Parul Varma write in The Indian Express of 22 October 2026 that One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC) was built for long-distance migrants but, in Bihar at least, does most of its work close to home. Using a dataset of 891 million transactions from Bihar’s AePDS portal since April 2022, they argue that the reform’s larger effect is to let a cardholder walk away from a ration dealer who short-changes her.

This page sets out the authors’ data and argument, places them against the official record of ONORC’s rollout, and shows how to read the figures with care. Singh is a JSPS postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tokyo and is associated with the Isaac Centre for Public Policy; Roy is with IFPRI and is a professor at Ashoka University; Varma is an associate with ICPP.

UPSC relevance:

  • GS Paper 2: welfare schemes for vulnerable sections and their performance; issues relating to poverty and hunger; transparency and accountability in service delivery.
  • GS Paper 3: public distribution system: objectives, functioning, limitations and revamping; food security.
  • Prelims: NFSA 2013 entitlements and coverage; ONORC rollout; fair price shops and the Essential Commodities Act, 1955; PMGKAY; ePoS devices and Aadhaar seeding of ration cards.
  • Essay and Interview: choice as empowerment; the power to exit as a check on a service provider.

The Crux in 60 Words

Before ONORC, a ration card worked only at one assigned shop. Portability lets a cardholder draw grain at any shop. The authors find that in Bihar this freedom is used mostly nearby, not across States: only 1 per cent of transactions took place in other States. Their conclusion is that ONORC’s real gift is bargaining power against the dealer.

Key Arguments at a Glance

Rahul Kumar Singh, Devesh Roy and Parul Varma argue in The Indian Express that ONORC’s biggest effect in Bihar is not long-distance migrant portability but a shift of bargaining power from the ration dealer to the cardholder, who can now take her entitlement to another shop.

Supporting
  • In their analysis of Bihar’s AePDS data, only 38 per cent of transactions in February and March were at the assigned fair price shop; 55 per cent were at another shop in the same block, 4 per cent in another block of the district, 2 per cent in another district and 1 per cent in other States.
  • They report that the share of portable transactions has climbed roughly six percentage points a year since April 2022, most of it at nearby shops (what they call type 1 portability).
  • Because, in their account, the dealer’s commission is tied to the volume of grain disbursed, a cardholder’s threat to exit disciplines the dealer.
  • In their view the tied household had no bargaining power before 2019, which typically hurt low-power, female-headed and lower-caste households.
Counter

The evidence covers one State and two months and comes from the authors’ own analysis; a move to a nearby shop shows where grain was drawn, not why, and may reflect convenience as much as short-changing. The authors also note that divisibility, the option to split the entitlement, is used sparingly.

Way Forward

On the authors’ terms: judge ONORC as an accountability tool, not only a migrant scheme. Our analysis adds: spread awareness of split lifting, publish shop-level portability data so that other States can test the Bihar finding, and build on the NFSA’s own reform clauses on computerised, transparent records.

Background and Context

What ONORC changed

Until 2019, the authors note, entitlements “were tied to the address on the card”, so a worker who left his village for a distant job “could not draw his or her grain at destination”. ONORC, sanctioned in 2018-19 and implemented from August 2019 (PIB), was meant to close that gap. In the authors’ description it has two elements:

  • Portability: with Aadhaar authentication, a beneficiary can collect her quota at any fair price shop in India.
  • Divisibility: the entitlement can be split across two (in principle more) draws, part at home and the rest where the migrant stays. PIB describes the same feature: members may “lift balance/required amount of foodgrains on the same ration card at their native/ any place from the FPS of their choice”. “Divisibility” is the authors’ word for it.

PIB also records that ONORC “was helpful to NFSA beneficiaries in availing food grains from any location during COVID pandemic/ lockdown period”, the gap the authors say the 2020 lockdown made “brutally visible”.

How it rolled out

When What happened Source
August 2019 Inter-State portability begins “in just 4 States” PIB Year End Review, 31 December 2025
August 2021 34 States/UTs covered PIB factsheet on ONORC
21 June 2022 Assam becomes the 36th State/UT; ONORC in all 36 States/UTs PIB, 21 June 2022
21 June 2022 About 71 crore portable transactions (43.6 crore NFSA and 27.8 crore PMGKAY) PIB, 21 June 2022
Reported 31 December 2025 More than 195.9 crore portability transactions since August 2019, delivering more than 464.7 LMT of foodgrains, inter-State and intra-State together PIB Year End Review, 31 December 2025

The same Year End Review counts about 32.6 crore portability transactions in 10 months of 2025 and “more than 3.2 crore portability transactions” a month under PMGKAY distribution. The PIB factsheet puts ONORC’s cost at a “minimal outlay of just Rs. 127 Crore, over a period of 4 years”.

The shop network

  • Fair price shops: PIB’s Year End Review of 31 December 2025 counts 5.51 lakh, of which about 99.8 per cent (5.50 lakh) are automated with electronic point-of-sale (ePoS) devices. A PIB backgrounder of 26 March 2026 counts 5.43 lakh, over 99 per cent of them with ePoS devices. The two official counts, three months apart, differ by about 8,000 shops; the authors round the figure to “5 lakh”.
  • Aadhaar seeding of ration cards: more than 99.9 per cent with at least one member seeded (31 December 2025); 99.8 per cent (26 March 2026).
  • Coverage: subsidised foodgrains for 81.35 crore NFSA beneficiaries (PIB, 26 March 2026); ONORC covers around 79.8 crore NFSA beneficiaries, almost the whole NFSA population (PIB, 31 December 2025). The authors write that “six in 10 Indians” draw subsidised cereals each month.

Bihar’s Ration Data: Where Cardholders Go

The authors chose Bihar, which they call “India’s poorest and largest migrant-donor state”, as the case that should show long-distance use if any State does. They use 891 million transactions from its AePDS portal since April 2022, with the IMPDS inter-State dataset for cross-State use of ONORC. The reform’s drafters, they write, expected the main benefit to go to long-distance migrant families. Their data point the other way.

They name two kinds of portability:

  • Type 1: the cardholder moves to a shop in the vicinity. The authors read this as a response to short-changing at the assigned shop, in price, quantity, grain quality or service.
  • Type 2: portability used by long-distance migrants.

Where Bihar’s ration transactions took place in February and March (the authors’ analysis):

Where the grain was drawn Share of transactions
The assigned fair price shop 38 per cent
Another shop in the same block 55 per cent
A shop in another block of the same district 4 per cent
A shop in another district 2 per cent
A shop in another State 1 per cent

Read the split with care. The authors sum it up as “62 of every 100 Bihar transactions happened at a shop near the cardholder’s assigned FPS”. The five shares show that 62 is every transaction away from the assigned shop: 59 per cent stayed within the district (55 in the same block, 4 in another block), and 3 per cent went to another district or State. The conclusion survives the correction: long-distance use is small and most switching is local.

The authors also report that the share of portable transactions has climbed “roughly six percentage points a year since April 2022, evenly across Bihar but most in type 1 portability”.

The Analysis

The authors’ argument: from monopoly to bargaining

  • The old tie. “Before 2019, the dealer was a monopolist,” the authors write. A household tied to one shop had no bargaining power when short-changed, and in their account this “typically affected comparatively low-power, female-headed and lower-caste households”.
  • The threat of exit. ONORC “structurally changes the power relations”. The cardholder can threaten to leave, which, the authors say, hurts the dealer because “the commission is tied to the volume of grain disbursed”. The cardholder who switches “disciplines dealers”.
  • The verdict. “What ONORC has given the cardholder is freedom and thereby empowerment,” they write, and they call the shift possibly “the largest welfare change PDS has seen in decades”.
  • The unused half. Divisibility, they note, is used “comparatively sparingly, perhaps due to lack of awareness, dealer incentives and other factors”.

What the evidence can and cannot show

  • One State, a short window. The split covers Bihar in February and March. Whether other States show the same local pattern is not tested in the column.
  • Motive is inferred. Transaction records show where grain was drawn, not why. The authors infer short-changing from proximity; a nearby shop may also be chosen for convenience, opening hours or stock. Their reading is plausible, but it is an inference.
  • National totals mix the two channels. PIB’s figure of more than 195.9 crore portability transactions “includes both inter-State and intra-State transactions”, so the national total cannot by itself separate migrant use from local choice. The Bihar split is useful precisely because it does.

The governance link

The NFSA already asks for the tools that make portability possible. Its reform clause, section 12(2), lists “application of information and communication technology tools including end-to-end computerisation in order to ensure transparent recording of transactions at all levels, and to prevent diversion”, the use of Aadhaar for unique identification of beneficiaries, and “full transparency of records”. It also asks for preference to Panchayats, self-help groups and co-operatives in licensing fair price shops, and to management of shops by women or their collectives. Read with section 13(1), which makes the eldest woman the head of the household for the ration card, portability puts a choice in the hands of the person the Act names.

Way forward

  1. Make split lifting known. If low awareness is one reason divisibility is little used, as the authors suggest, States can publicise the option at the shops themselves.
  2. Publish shop-level portability data, so that researchers and social audits can test the Bihar finding in other States.
  3. Treat portability as a performance signal. A shop that keeps losing its cardholders is a shop to inspect.
  4. Keep the system working. Choice depends on ePoS devices and Aadhaar authentication, which PIB reports at over 99 per cent coverage; an outage or a failed authentication takes the choice away.

Data and Institutions Vault

Prelims-grade facts:

The law (National Food Security Act, 2013):

  • Deemed in force from 5 July 2013; published in the Gazette on 10 September 2013.
  • Priority households: 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month; Antyodaya Anna Yojana: 35 kg per household per month (section 3(1)).
  • Coverage: up to 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population (section 3(2)).
  • The Centre allocates grain by eligible persons in each State (section 22(2)); States deliver to each fair price shop and run the scheme (section 24).
  • Fair price shop: licensed under section 3 of the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 (section 2(4)).
  • Head of household for the ration card: the eldest woman aged 18 or above (section 13(1)).
  • Section 12(2) reforms include end-to-end computerisation, use of Aadhaar and full transparency of records.
  • Section 12(2) also prefers Panchayats, self-help groups and co-operatives in licensing fair price shops.

One Nation One Ration Card:

  • Sanctioned in 2018-19; implemented from August 2019, with inter-State portability in 4 States.
  • 34 States/UTs by August 2021; all 36 States/UTs on 21 June 2022 (Assam the 36th).
  • Outlay: Rs 127 crore over 4 years (PIB factsheet).
  • More than 195.9 crore portability transactions since August 2019 (PIB, 31 December 2025), delivering more than 464.7 LMT of foodgrains.
  • More than 3.2 crore portability transactions a month under PMGKAY (PIB, 31 December 2025).

The network:

  • Fair price shops: 5.51 lakh (PIB, 31 December 2025); 5.43 lakh (PIB, 26 March 2026).
  • ePoS automation: about 99.8 per cent of shops (31 December 2025); over 99 per cent (26 March 2026).
  • NFSA beneficiaries: 81.35 crore (PIB, 26 March 2026); ONORC covers around 79.8 crore (31 December 2025).

PMGKAY:

  • Free foodgrains to about 81.35 crore beneficiaries for five years from 1 January 2024 (Cabinet, 29 November 2023).
  • Estimated cost: about Rs 11.80 lakh crore (Cabinet, 29 November 2023).

The authors’ Bihar data (their analysis, not official statistics):

  • 891 million AePDS transactions since April 2022.
  • February and March: 38 per cent at the assigned shop, 55 same block, 4 other block, 2 other district, 1 other States.

⚠️ Watch the trap: ONORC did not start nationwide in 2019: it began in 4 States in August 2019 and reached all 36 States/UTs on 21 June 2022. Rs 3, Rs 2 and Rs 1 per kg for rice, wheat and coarse grains were the NFSA’s Schedule I ceiling prices for the first three years; PMGKAY grain is now free. The NFSA was deemed in force from 5 July 2013, though published on 10 September 2013. PIB’s portability totals count intra-State and inter-State transactions together.

The Debate

The authors: portability is bargaining power The other side
Only 38 per cent of Bihar’s transactions were at the assigned shop The data cover one State and two months
Switching to a nearby shop signals short-changing at the assigned one Records show where grain was drawn, not why; convenience may explain some moves
A dealer whose commission depends on volume is disciplined by the threat of exit Exit works only where a rival shop is within reach and ePoS and authentication work
Long-distance migrant use is small: 1 per cent in other States Migrant use was the design goal, and PIB records its help during the COVID-19 lockdown
Choice helps low-power, female-headed and lower-caste households most The column gives no breakdown of the data by household type

Balanced verdict: the authors’ central finding is striking and exam-worthy: a portability reform built for migrants may matter more as a check on the local ration shop. The evidence is one State’s data, read by the authors, and the motive behind each switch is inferred. Treat it as a strong hypothesis for policy, not a settled result, and ask for the same data from other States.

How to Think About This

  1. Add up the shares. When a column gives a headline figure and a breakdown, check that they match. Here the 62 per cent is every transaction away from the assigned shop, including 3 per cent outside the district.
  2. Separate the two channels. Portability serves migrants (type 2) and local choice (type 1). National totals that mix intra-State and inter-State transactions cannot tell them apart.
  3. Ask what the data observe. A transaction record shows place, not motive. The short-changing story is an inference from proximity.
  4. Date every official figure. Fair price shops are 5.51 lakh in one PIB release and 5.43 lakh in another three months later: write each figure with its source and date.

Diagram-in-Words

Argument map

One Nation One Ration Card: from one shop to a choice of shops

Covers the tie to one shop before 2019, the two elements of ONORC, the authors' Bihar data and their reading of it.

A card tied to one assigned shop a worker who left his village could not draw his or her grain at destination; the authors call the dealer a monopolist Portability with Aadhaar authentication, the quota at any fair price shop in India Divisibility the entitlement split across two (in principle more) draws ONORC Assigned shop 38 per cent Same district, another shop 59 per cent: 55 in the same block, 4 in another block Outside the district 3 per cent: 2 another district, 1 another State Bihar, February and March (the authors' analysis) Bargaining power moves to the cardholder the threat of exit disciplines a dealer whose commission, they say, is tied to the volume of grain disbursed the authors' reading Divisibility used sparingly perhaps due to lack of awareness, dealer incentives and other factors the unused half
The authors' argument: ONORC was built for migrants, but in Bihar most switching is local, so its main effect is to give the cardholder bargaining power against the dealer.
✍️ Mains Answer Framework
Question

One Nation One Ration Card was designed for long-distance migrants, but evidence suggests that its larger effect may be to give beneficiaries a choice of fair price shop. Examine the significance of portability for accountability in the Public Distribution System and suggest measures to strengthen it. (250 words)

Introduction

The National Food Security Act, 2013 entitles priority households to 5 kg of foodgrains per person per month and Antyodaya Anna Yojana households to 35 kg per household per month, delivered through fair price shops licensed under the Essential Commodities Act, 1955. Until 2019 a ration card could be used only at its assigned shop.
One Nation One Ration Card (ONORC), implemented from August 2019 and in all 36 States and UTs by 21 June 2022, made the entitlement portable.

Body

Portability was designed mainly for migrant workers who could not draw grain where they worked, and PIB records that it helped beneficiaries obtain foodgrains from any location during the COVID-19 lockdown. Its scale is now large: more than 195.9 crore portability transactions since August 2019, as PIB reported on 31 December 2025, counting inter-State and intra-State use together.
Evidence from Bihar points to a second channel. An analysis of the State’s AePDS data found that in February and March only 38 per cent of transactions were at the assigned shop, 59 per cent at another shop in the same district and 1 per cent in other States.
Portability therefore works as exit: a household short-changed on quantity, grain quality or service can go to another shop, and the threat of losing cardholders gives dealers a reason to improve. This can matter most for households with the least bargaining power.
Limits remain. Split lifting of the entitlement is little used, the evidence comes from one State, and choice depends on working ePoS devices, which PIB reported in over 99 per cent of fair price shops on 26 March 2026, and on Aadhaar authentication.

Conclusion

ONORC should be judged not only by how many migrants it serves but by the accountability it creates at the ration shop. Awareness of split lifting, public shop-level portability data and the NFSA’s own reform clauses on computerised, transparent records can turn portability into a lasting check on poor service and diversion.

Interview Angle

"One Nation One Ration Card was designed for migrant workers, yet in Bihar most portable transactions take place at shops close to home. What does that tell you about how a welfare reform should be judged?"

Takeaway Box

  • Lift line: “The bargaining-power reallocation may be the largest welfare change PDS has seen in decades.”
  • The argument: ONORC was built for migrants, but in Bihar its main effect is local choice of shop, which shifts bargaining power from the dealer to the cardholder.
  • The data (the authors, Bihar, February and March): 38 per cent at the assigned shop, 55 same block, 4 other block, 2 other district, 1 other States.
  • The rollout: 4 States in August 2019; all 36 States/UTs on 21 June 2022; more than 195.9 crore portability transactions since August 2019 (PIB, 31 December 2025).
  • The law: NFSA 2013: 5 kg per person a month for priority households, 35 kg per Antyodaya household; up to 75 per cent rural and 50 per cent urban coverage.
  • Mains keywords: portability, divisibility, bargaining power, exit, fair price shop, accountability, diversion, targeted PDS.
  • Ethics and Interview: a welfare reform judged by the dignity and choice it gives the beneficiary, not only by its reach.
  • Probable question: “Examine the significance of One Nation One Ration Card for accountability in the Public Distribution System.”
  • Watch next: whether other States’ data show the same local pattern, and the take-up of split lifting.

Sources:

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