Digital Rashan Card

Digital Rashan Card (DRC) Inspiration: In Pakistan, thousands of families rely on government ration programs for their daily needs. Yet many deserving families never receive the subsidies allocated for them. During our research, we found that manual registration, fake entries, and lack of coordination between government authorities and local kiryana stores lead to unequal and inefficient distribution. This inspired us to create the Digital Rashan Card (DRC) — a web-based solution that makes ration distribution transparent, efficient, and fair, ensuring that aid truly reaches those who need it most.

What We Learned: Building DRC helped us understand how technology can bridge the gap between policy and impact. Through this project, we learned to: Map real-world welfare workflows into digital systems. Design scalable web applications using the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, Node.js). Implement role-based authentication and real-time tracking of transactions. Align social welfare technology with UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 1: No Poverty, SDG 10: Reduced Inequalities).

How We Built It: The DRC system is built around three core portals: Admin Portal: Used to verify retailers, allocate funds, and monitor distribution. Retailer Portal: Allows approved shopkeepers to register citizens and record transactions. Citizen Portal: Enables citizens to view balances, transaction history, and nearby registered stores. Challenges We Faced: Integrating multiple user roles and permissions securely. Maintaining real-time fund updates without compromising data integrity. Ensuring UI consistency across portals with distinct functionalities. Balancing time constraints and feature completeness during development.

Impact and Vision: The Digital Rashan Card replaces outdated paper-based processes with a transparent digital system that builds trust between the government, retailers, and citizens. Our vision is to expand DRC into a nationwide platform, integrated with national identity databases (e.g., NADRA), to support millions of families through reliable, data-driven welfare distribution.

Tagline: Delivering fairness, digitally.