Nutrition, health plans out of direct cash transfer

The UPA government has kept nutritional and direct health schemes outside the purview the direct cash transfer programme after resistance from within. But, their delivery would be linked to unique identification or Aadhaar number to improve efficiency.

Updated on: Dec 15, 2012, 24:42:43 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government has kept nutritional and direct health schemes outside the purview the direct cash transfer programme after resistance from within. But, their delivery would be linked to unique identification or Aadhaar number to improve efficiency.

Direct cash transfer for 34 schemes in 43 select districts was announced recently and the government has taken up its implementation on war-footing under supervision of principal secretary to PM Pulak Chatterjee.

A senior government official told HT that a decision at the highest level was taken not to include public distribution system (PDS), mid-day meal, integrated child development scheme and direct health schemes such as Asha in direct cash transfer mechanism.

“People would continue to get their ration from a fair price shop but through an Aadhaar enabled mechanism,” the official said.

The government is looking at electronic subsidy voucher for each beneficiary on the Aadhaar platform. The voucher for a particular beneficiary would get automatically redeemed once the person does biometric authentication of having received his or her monthly quota of ration.

In case of mid-day meal and ICDS, the Aadhaar platform would be used to check whether the food being provided is actually being consumed or not. “We can seek online authentication of the beneficiaries,” an official said.

The officials said the decision to keep these schemes out was taken after senior Cabinet ministers raised concern whether the subsidy transferred into bank
accounts would be used for the purpose it was provided.

There have been studies in Latin America suggesting that direct cash transfer had resulted in increased consumption of liquor and other intoxicants. “Direct cash transfer will be implemented in 34 listed schemes first,” an official said.

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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