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Business Standard / Jan 31, 2013, 00:40 IST
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It's been called a game-changer, a nationwide technology-backed initiative that promises to change the way the government delivers entitlement to citizens. But a month after the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme was officially rolled out across 20 districts, a look at the ground realities reveals a yawning gap between intent and implementation. Of the five districts Business Standard visited, there are those, like Northeast Delhi, where not a single transfer has been made. Nonetheless, the challenge of simultaneously enrolling and opening bank accounts of millions of beneficiaries must be quickly surmounted, before the efficacy of the ambitious DBT scheme can be adjudged.
ALWAR, RAJASTHAN: Innovation drives enrolment
Ashutosh A T Pednekar, the collector of Alwar, sits in a magnificent office in the city’s erstwhile palace, the same chamber from where Michael Francis O’Dwyer, the British administrator notorious for endorsing the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, once governed Rajasthan’s northern regions. Quite unlike his Irish predecessor’s legacy, this Goan civil servant is likely to be better known for an administrative innovation that may well turn out to be the blueprint for implementing the DBT scheme launched on January 1
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