the sunday express Posted online: Sun Dec 09 2012, 02:11 hrs
With the government announcing cash transfers in 51 districts across the country, The Sunday Express looks at how the system works on the ground
Tigra, Jharkhand
Money for work
Deepu Sebastian Edmond
Duda Oraon and wife Gaura Devi of Nava Toli are among the 30 in Tigra panchayat in Jharkhand who have been paid through Aadhaar for their work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
“We did almost 100 days of work, both in 2010 and 2011. This year, our job card has clocked 60 days,” says Duda. For the 45-year-old Duda, MNREGA meant that he never considered seasonal migration again. “I have been to Varanasi and Kolkata to work in brick kilns. Now that I have work in my own village, I don’t feel the need to go again.”
Tigra is a gram panchayat in Ranchi’s Ratu block, one of three gram panchayats selected for an Aadhaar-enabled pilot to transfer NREGA payments to bank accounts of beneficiaries. The first payment of the pilot, which is on in Hazaribagh’s Sadar and Saraikela-Kharsawan’s Chandil, apart from Ratu, was made on December 24 last year.
Before the pilot was launched in December 2011, Duda had to cycle three kilometres to the post office in the adjacent Pali panchayat to collect his MNREGA payments. “I would spend anything between 15 minutes and half-a-day there, depending on the rush. Even the time taken for payments was erratic. Sometimes, the money came in five days, sometimes 20,” he says. Like most people in the region, Duda does MNREGA work during the February-June window, when the summer sets in. It’s harvesting season now and all MNREGA work has come to a halt.
Once his MNREGA job card was linked to Aadhaar, it ensured that payments were credited much faster to his bank account. On days when a lot of payments had to be made, people like Mahmood Alam would come to the job sites with a hand-held micro-ATM to disburse funds. At other times, Alam works at the Pragya Kendra located at the panchayat office where people turn up to get their fingerprints authenticated. Mahmood is also in charge of giving away old-age pensions, linked to Aadhaar since the pilot’s October 2 inauguration this year.
According to Sangita Kumari Gupta, Ratu’s Block Programming Officer, 142 individuals in the three gram panchayats have been paid their MNREGA money under the system since the launch of the pilot. But since the launch of the employment scheme here in 2006, 780 households have received payment. The gap means that a lot of beneficiaries with Aadhaar numbers continue to go to the post-office, 3 km away, to withdraw money under the job scheme.
Preliminary enquiries suggest that the mismatch has occurred because of the sluggishness and confusion over the ‘mapping’ process. Aadhaar, or the Unique Identification Authority of India numbers, have been issued and MNREGA job cards have been given out. However, the two have not been mapped together as fast as they should have been. The Jharkhand government is responsible for this process.
Discrepancies in fingerprint recognition persist, though the estimates vary. Jhigia Uraon, 46, of Basai Toli is one such case. Her fingerprints didn’t match when she tried to collect her MNREGA payment. But Jhigia is not disillusioned with a system that failed her once. She has applied for a new Aadhaar, with her April 1, 2012 registration slip duly noting that all 10 fingers have been registered. “I won’t have to go to the post office anymore,” she smiles.
Baloda Bazar, Chhattisgarh
Easy cash
Ashutosh Bhardwaj
About eight years ago, when farmer Radhe Painkra had to buy a tube-well under the Indira Khet Ganga Yojana, all he had to do was submit his application at the agriculture department and wait for the subsidy amount—around Rs 35,000—to be deposited in his bank account. He went to the open market and bought the tubewell. No middlemen, no greasing of palms.
“I got the entire money. No cut for anyone,” says Painkra, a farmer of Damru village in Baloda Bazar district. The scheme predates the Raman Singh-led BJP government, which simply rechristened it Kisan Samriddhi Yojna.
In 2005-6, Raman Singh launched a similar scheme, Shakambari Yojana, for marginal and small farmers under which farmers were given a 75 per cent subsidy on wells and electric/diesel/ kerosene irrigation pumps. Here, too, money directly reached the accounts of beneficiaries.
Incidentally, Singh recently opposed the UPA’s cash transfer scheme to replace subsidies, saying it would destroy welfare schemes. Agriculture Director Pratap Rao Kridatt says, “In our schemes, the beneficiary farmer has the choice of buying tubewells and pumps either at subsidised rates from the Beej Nigam office or getting the money transferred in his account and buying from a private dealer. He can also buy at a subsidised rate from a private shop and ask us to pay the dealer the differential. In UPA’s scheme, there is no such flexibility,” he says.
There are more reasons for the BJP government to be sceptical about replacing subsidies with direct cash transfer. “Given the limitations of banking and IT infrastructure (in the state), cash transfers will lead to increased inconvenience to beneficiaries,” CM Singh wrote in his recent letter to the Union Agriculture Minister KV Thomas.
Gollaprolu, Andhra pradesh
All dressed for the rollout
Sreenivas Janyala
At ration shop no 5 in a quiet lane in Gollaprolu mandal, T V Satya watches in amazement as the handheld biometric machine beeps and authenticates his finger print. The touch screen comes alive, displaying Satya’s Aadhaar number and the quota of rice, sugar, oil and dal he is entitled to. The 34-year-old cannot read English so when the dealer T Ravi touches the screen, the machine reads out aloud—Satya’s name, what he is entitled to, and the amount he has to pay. Another touch and the machine prints a small receipt. A few seconds later, Satya receives a message on his mobile phone in Telugu that he has used his quota for the month at the ration shop.
“Two days ago, I got a message on my phone that stocks had been delivered at the ration shop. This system is good. I don’t have to make the rounds of the ration shop to enquire,’’ says Satya, paying Rs 90 for his subsidised ration.
Gollaprolu is the site of a pilot project for Aadhaar-enabled PDS that began in the first week of November. So far, 1,100 ration card holders have gone through it at shop no 5. Now, this system is gearing up for the Centre’s direct cash transfer scheme, where the beneficiaries will buy from the open market and the subsidy amount will be transferred to their accounts. The Aadhaar-enabled cash transfer is only for non-food items like kerosene, pension, NREGS, welfare, scholarships, performance-based cash incentives. The cash transfer pilot hasn’t begun yet. Food items, fertiliser and LPG are included in the Aadhaar-enabled PDS, where an authentication is carried out to remove bogus claims.
“Gollaprolu mandal was selected for the pilot project of Aadhaar-enabled PDS and the cash transfer scheme because all its residents are Aadhaar enrolled,’’ says East Godavari Joint Collector A Babu. East Godavari is one of the 51 districts identified by the Centre across the country where Aadhaar-enabled cash transfer will get rolling.
After a few smooth transactions at the ration shop, it’s Gangamma’s turn. The machine refuses to authenticate the 60-year-old’s fingerprint. After five failed attempts, the machine sends a one-time password to her mobile phone which she can use to identify herself to the machine. But Gangamma doesn’t carry a phone. Fortunately, the Village Revenue Officer is around to give his own authentication after verifying her Aadhaar number. However, the machine does send the information about the rejection to the Electronic Point of Sale Management Information System, an online monitoring system linked to central servers in Hyderabad. Authorities will examine why the fingerprints were rejected and what action is to be taken.
“There are some teething problems. Farm workers and labourers usually have cuts and nicks on their fingers. Sometimes, the PoS machine rejects all 10 fingerprints,’’ says Assistant Supply Officer Subra Raju.
In East Godavari district, 51.50 lakh people had been enrolled into Aadhaar till the end of November. The effects and benefits are already being felt, says Joint Collector Babu. Only authentic card holders can buy rations and the sale of rice at ration shops has come down by 10 to 20 per cent, sugar by 15 per cent, and kerosene by 30 per cent. “We have so far identified 1.20 lakh bogus or duplicate card holders,’’ Babu says.
The district administration plans to open at least one bank account for every household. Of the 60 mandals in the district, in 12 mandals, every household has a bank account as of December 6. “Once the money is transferred, either the beneficiary can withdraw from the bank directly, by either identifying herself through her biometrics, or business correspondents will carry portable ATMs that deliver cash at the village level,’’ says Babu.
The portable ATMs are being provided to Bank of India, Axis Bank, Union Bank of India and ICICI, the banks in which accounts are being opened for cash transfer beneficiaries. A trial run was conducted early this week.
All this has left the intended beneficiaries somewhat bemused. “I have heard that money will be put in our bank accounts but I do not know how I can get that money,’’ says Kaki Rambabu, a small farmer.
HOSHANGABAD, MADHYA PRADESH
More checks, no cheques
MILIND GHATWAI
Ramkishore Rajput, a farmer from Bichhua village in Hoshangabad, sits relaxed in a ground near a paddy procurement centre in Jyasalpur village. “Now we go home immediately after our produce is weighed.” All he has to do is go home and wait for the SMS that will alert him when his money finds its way into his bank account. It usually takes about a week.
Since last year, Government agencies in the state have been procuring wheat and rice from farmers and depositing the money directly in their bank accounts. Before the system was introduced, farmers who sold their produce at mandis would be issued cheques, which they used as instruments to borrow till the money was deposited in their accounts or till they could encash it. Farmers also had to make several rounds of the cooperative bank which would accept the cheque only if it had money.
Farmers now have to register themselves with procurement centres. Once they are registered, they wait for SMS alerts to inform them when to turn up at the procurement centres with their produce.
MP procured a record 85 lakh quintals of wheat last year. According to government records, 10,26,720 farmers benefited from the scheme and Rs 13,250 crore was deposited directly in their accounts. From April 2011 to June 2012, the government deposited a total subsidy of Rs 137.49 crore in farmers’ bank accounts. Also, Rs 38.91 crore was deposited under the National Food Security Mission in the accounts of 36,995 farmers.
Daspur, Orissa
Cradle bonus
Debabrata Mohanty
In September last year, Gitanjali Behera, who lives in Daspur village in Bhubaneswar with her labourer husband Ajay, was pleasantly surprised at the flurry of visits by anganwadi workers.
“They wanted me to fill up a form for opening a bank account. I was told that I would get money in my account for my pregnancy,” says Gitanjali.
So Gitanjali and 24 other pregnant women in her village queued up at the Khandagiri branches
of Andhra Bank and Punjab National Bank for ‘Mamata’, a conditional cash transfer maternity benefit scheme for pregnant women and lactating mothers launched by the Naveen Patnaik government last September.
The scheme, which is aimed at bringing down the state’s high infant mortality rate (65 per 1,000 births) and maternal mortality rate (258 per 1 lakh births), covers pregnant women above the age of 19.
Last December, Behera got her first installment of Rs 5,000. The other installments were tied down to conditions like antenatal check-up, intake of folic acid tablet, tetanus vaccination, BCG, polio, measles vaccination and breast-feeding.
Since September last year, when the scheme was launched, Rs 158 crore has been credited to the bank accounts of about six lakh pregnant women in the state. “What’s more, we have now 6 lakh women with bank accounts,” says Arti Ahuja, secretary of women and child development department.
Amritsar, Punjab
Shagun for brides
Sukhdeep Kaur
Ajaib Singh’s family had never got a wedding card printed. But when it was time for the wedding of the 62-year-old labourer’s eldest daughter Manjit Kaur in 2006, his son took an invitation card to the tehsil welfare office in Amritsar’s Baba Bakala. They tagged it with an application form for claiming Rs 6,100 as ‘shagun’, a financial help extended by the Punjab government for families belonging to weaker sections of the society to meet the wedding expenses of their daughters. The form was accepted after they paid Rs 200 for “assistance” in filling the form. The shagun arrived a year-and-a-half after the wedding. The cheque was handed over to Singh only after he paid Rs 500 to the employee of the welfare department.
Six years later, Ajaib filled out another shagun form, this time for his second daughter, Amarjit, who got married on September 22 this year. The shagun, now increased to Rs 15,000, reached his daughter’s account within a month of her wedding, this time without any commission for delivery. Shagun was made a cash transfer scheme this January to bring in more transparency.
