Scalable blockchain solution for targeted public distribution system (TPDS) in India

Abstract

The Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) in India is essential to supply food grains produced by farmers to the beneficiaries. It provides affordable food grains to the deprived families of India. However, the current TPDS system is plagued by various issues, leakage being the primary one. This work aims to use blockchain technology, one of the cutting edge technologies, to overcome the issue of leakage and make the TPDS a digital, secure, transparent and scalable system. Blockchain provides transparency such that any user can access the system to get an understanding of the quantity of food grains being processed at each stage of the TPDS workflow. The system requires minimal human intervention and would be deployed across all states. This ensures a unified workflow for TPDS across all states and gives a more holistic understanding of how TPDS benefits the deprived families in India. To make the blockchain system scalable, the blockchain network is divided into 'shards', which are independent chains containing their own data separate from others. The proposed TPDS blockchain system was implemented in Hyperledger Fabric and was tested for different use cases. The authors found that the proposed blockchain architecture is responding well to all the use cases considered. © 2021 IEEE.