Govt launches truncated cash subsidy plan

The government will launch its “game changer” direct cash transfer project on Tuesday in a scaled down format — it will cover 20 districts instead of 43, with only seven schemes against 34 announced earlier.

Updated on: Jan 1, 2013, 01:04:59 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government will launch its “game changer” direct cash transfer project on Tuesday in a scaled down format — it will cover 20 districts instead of 43, with only seven schemes against 34 announced earlier.

“We are proceeding with caution,” finance minister P Chidambaram said, announcing the rollout. He said the project would cover 20 districts from January 1, 11 more from February 1 and another 12 from March 1.

Chidambaram said once the project stabilised in 43 districts, it would be extended to the rest of the country in a phased manner. The target is to cover the country by the end of 2013 for schemes such as scholarships, pensions and wages under the employment guarantee scheme.

The decision to scale down the first phase was taken after the government found that the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) could not cover 80% of the districts identified by the PMO in October.

Plus, the pace of opening of bank accounts for beneficiaries in many districts was slower than anticipated. And digitisation of data has not taken place at all in some of the 43 target districts.

“There is also the complaint that states are trying to increase the number of beneficiaries to keep the volume of their central allocation intact as bogus entities are being weeded out,” a planning commission official said.

The slow digitisation affected the unique identification or Aadhaar numbers, a must for transferring cash through Aadhaar numbers.

In case a beneficiary does not have an Aadhaar number, the benefit will be transferred to his bank account according to the existing practice. The UIDAI has been asked to conduct special camps to enrol beneficiaries.

Chidambaram also assured that there was no plan to disburse cash subsidies on fuels and fertilisers in the first phase.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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