Dr Alok Shukla is among those civil servants who received awards for excellence in public administration from the prime minister on April 21. As secretary, food and civil supplies department, Chhattisgarh, he, along with two of his colleagues, has been credited with turning the much-maligned PDS into a success story. So much so that a sample survey of four districts by the Right to Food Campaign in November 2009 showed the consumer satisfaction level at 98 percent! How did he do it? Edited excerpts from an interview.