A Case Discussion on Vendor Selection in Public Distribution System in Odisha : A Multicriteria Decision-Making Approach

In India, where 40% of the people are still below the poverty line, feeding them is a challenge. On the other hand, the government is taking lots of initiatives to feed the poor section of the society. In this connection, the Government of India has implemented Public Distribution System (PDS) to supply the required food grains at a subsidized rate through vendors or Fair Price Shops (FPS). The selection of vendors and vendor’s responsibility play a vital role in the PDS system, which is also a reason for the dissatisfaction among consumers. So the researchers and the authorities are always searching for a better process to improve the selection of vendors or FPS to minimize the problems in PDS. In this paper, an attempt has been made to suggest a method for selection of vendors for PDS with multicriteria decision-making tools, i.e., Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)