SMS Food Alerts To Indian Poor

A regional goverment in India plans to send SMS alerts about the availability and supply of food to beneficiaries of the subsidised public distribution system (PDS).
When the 35kg of rice a month to each family is available at the distribution centre SMS alerts will be sent out to families registered.

To get the alerts, the families will have to register details of their mobile phones at the food and civil supplies department website.
... The scheme will cover 3.4 million families or about 60 percent of the state's 20.08 million population although officials admitted they are unclear how many of such families actually own mobile phones or even have access to the internet to be able to register.

[source : 160characters.org]