For many years, the Indonesian government’s food aid program sent bags of rice to villages, where local leaders were supposed to distribute them to poor residents every month. But starting about five years ago, Indonesia changed that. Instead of rice bags, the poor were sent debit cards to buy the equivalent amount of food at local neighborhood shops. Going digital had a major effect: Suddenly millions of Indonesians in the program started receiving the total amount of food intended for them 81 percent of the time, according to a study…
