Food subsidy distribution system through Blockchain technology: a value focused thinking approach for prototype development

ABSTRACT

Developing economies provide basic food commodities to the economically backward sections of the society at subsidized prices to reduce food insecurity. The main objective of these programs is to insulate the poor from the impact of rising prices of food commodities and maintain the minimum nutritional status of the population. However, there are financial mismanagement and issues associated with the current working of these schemes that attributed to the illicit diversion of the commodities, urban bias, serious wastage of food and inefficient supervision during the distribution process. Thus, the policy implementation fails to reach its intended beneficiaries. We used principles of Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) to understand this problem at the grass root level by consulting the various stakeholders involved in the food subsidy value-chain. Based on these findings from VFT, we propose a Blockchain-based system demonstrated through a prototype to provide a robust solution for the aforementioned research context.

KEYWORDS:

• Food subsidy
• Blockchain technology
• value-focused thinking
• prototype development
• transparency and trust

Acknowledgements

This research used IBM’s open source platform of Hyperledger Fabric, Hyperledger Composer and Google’s Angular 7 Framework that assisted us in presenting the Blockchain Prototype. In addition, the authors thank anonymous stakeholders in the value chain of Food Subsidy Distribution System whose valuable inputs through VFT helped us to tackle this research problem effectively. The authors also thank the anonymous reviewers whose constructive comments helped us in improving the quality of the paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rohan Sanjay Pawar

Rohan Sanjay Pawar is currently a Technical Consultant at Morgan Stanley, Mumbai, India. He completed his Bachelor in Information Technology from Sardar Patel Institute of Technology. He has also interned with Accolite Software Pvt Ltd. during his undergraduate term and has been part of the Credit Suisse Labs, an initiative by Credit Suisse for undergraduate students. With a keen research, interest in Blockchain technology, Rohan has developed his own standalone public Blockchain network for cryptocurrency trading and has been involved in various blockchain-based projects that in one way or another aims to benefit society. He has won the Smart India Hackathon, 2019 edition for developing a Blockchain-based tracking system for government permits. Rohan has also secured 7th rank across India in a blockchain-based course conducted by the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), an initiative by the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science.

Sarah Ashok Sonje

Sarah Ashok Sonje is currently a Software Development Engineer I at Amazon. In this role, she works with Elastic search and other Distributed Systems. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Sardar Patel Institute of Technology. Sarah is a Blockchain and Analytics enthusiast and often gives a shot at developing innovative real-time blockchain networks often with an aim and inspiration to benefit the society. She has won the Smart India Hackathon, 2019 edition for developing a Blockchain based tracking system for government permits. Sarah is a creative and analytical problem solver with keen interest in mathematics and competitive programming. Exploring her passion for mathematics, she has also interned at Credit Suisse as a Financial Analyst during her undergraduate education.

Shekhar Shukla

Shekhar Shukla is currently a Faculty member in the area of Information Management at S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR) Mumbai, India. He completed his Doctorate (FPM) in Decision Science and Information Technology & System Area at Indian Institute of Management Lucknow. He is also a Computer Science and Engineering graduate from VTU, Karnataka. He has received reputed Tata Scholarship and International MCDM Society scholarship because of his academic and research endeavours. He is also received Best paper award for his Doctoral Work from IIT Bombay. He has research work accepted at reputed journals like Industrial Management & Data Systems, First Monday – A journal by University of Illinois at Chicago, Journal of Information Technology and Tourism, International Journal of Business Intelligence and Data Mining, Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations, Procedia Computer Science etc. He is a researcher in the field of Blockchain, Forensics, Data Science, Decision Analysis, Fuzzy Logic and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis.