More welfare failures

Even Jan Dhan accounts have not worked as hoped

One of the major channels through which the government intended to ensure that relief reached the people who needed it during the stringent lockdown did not work as expected. On March 26, the government had said that women holders of the no-frills Jan Dhan bank accounts would receive Rs 500 a month for three months. This was part of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan package, and it was hoped that it would help many tide over the difficult period in which the economy was forced to a stop by measures meant to control the spread of Covid-19. However, as of May 20 less than half the women recipients of the support programme withdrew the money after two instalments had been issued. The government discovered this after looking at the data for 200 million accounts.

This fact is worrying. It underlines the continuing gaps in India’s welfare system and those must be urgently addressed. But it also makes it obvious that the much-vaunted direct benefit transfer mechanisms themselves may not work as expected, particularly at moments of crisis. They are still not completely satisfactory methods of reaching the neediest at short notice and during emergencies such as the pandemic. It is not clear why the accounts have not been used as expected. Perhaps people were unable to access ATMs during a strict lockdown, or perhaps the money has not in fact been transferred to those most in need. It is plain that India needs a better understanding and mapping of households. A welfare system that operates in an information vacuum as to its recipients is one that will never be sufficiently and properly designed. It is not just the rural poor that the welfare system fails to see — the urban poor and internal migrants are particularly vulnerable, given that there are insufficient systems in place to reach them. This makes it clear that many well-meant suggestions about increasing welfare spending are not really helpful — just throwing money at the problem will not be of assistance if the pipelines to reach those who need help are themselves flawed. 

A careful balancing of priorities is needed. The country cannot give up on the possibilities of direct benefit transfers. But it is also clear that at moments like these, welfare in kind — whether ration or hot food — may be more valuable. Thus, the systems for providing such welfare should not be suspended entirely. It is also necessary to work on methods of ensuring the accessibility, universality, and transferability of benefits. The “one nation, one ration card” concept, for example, might be helpful to ensure that migrants can share the entitlements of their families back home to food rations. It is true that the government has highlighted the problems being faced by the scheme particularly during the pandemic — for example, not enough ration shops have working point-of-sale machines. However, these are problems that can be fixed. Most important is a reconfiguration of what is understood in terms of who the beneficiaries of welfare are. The actual lived experience of the vulnerable — rural landless, women, urban poor, and migrants — must be incorporated, alongside the granular data of their location and numbers, into the planning of the welfare system.