Can AI pass Gandhi’s talisman? Inside India’s Rs 25,530-crore SARTHAK-PDS gamble

In the closing days of his life, Mahatma Gandhi offered the leaders of a nascent India a moral compass, famously known as his Talisman. “Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen,” he advised, “and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him.”

For nearly eight decades, the Indian state has attempted to operationalise this empathy through the Public Distribution System (PDS) — a heavily subsidised logistical leviathan designed to ensure that no citizen starves.