Direct benefit transfer plan set for expansion

To check rising public expenditure, the government’s two biggest money-spender schemes — subsidised ration for poor and job guarantee in rural areas — will soon be on the Aadhaar-enabled Direct Benefit Transfer platform.

Updated on: Sep 20, 2014, 24:34:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To check rising public expenditure, the government’s two biggest money-spender schemes — subsidised ration for poor and job guarantee in rural areas — will soon be on the Aadhaar-enabled Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) platform.

The disbursal of subsidy for cooking gas cylinders will come back on the DBT platform after the previous UPA government decided to put it on the hold just before general elections.

The UPA, which started transfer of public money directly into the bank accounts of beneficiaries through DBT, had deliberately kept the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) out of it fearing it would invite adverse reaction.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a meeting with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) officials about a fortnight ago gave a go-ahead to include the two schemes that account for more than `1,50,000 crore of the central expenditure, into the DBT platform.

A planning commission study had estimated that one-fourth of the food grains meant for the poor never reach the beneficiaries and there have been instances of large number of fake job cards to get benefit under MGNREGA. The move would help the government to plug these leakages.

Modi had also instructed that the disbursement of the cooking gas subsidy should be resumed on the DBT platform. The existing schemes of the DBT platform — pensions, scholarships and incentives to save the girl child — would also be extended to these 300 districts, officials said.

The PM has instructed that the UIDAI should ensure complete coverage in these 300 districts and meet the target of seeding of Aadhaar numbers in the bank accounts of at least 80% beneficiaries. “The PM wants the UIDAI to meet the target before the next review meeting to be held sometime in January 2015,” a senior government functionary said.

For that the Planning Commission has called a meeting of chief secretaries of all union territories and states on September 27 and 30 respectively.

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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