How Aadhar is helping welfare schemes like NREGA, Swachch Bharat get a new lease of life

A three-hour drive from Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand, through lush green paddy fields and a succession of mango trees providing a canopy to a single lane highway takes you to a village known as Maryam Tola. The celebrations of the tribal festival Karma, held every year to pray for a rich harvest, have just concluded. Framed by the Sankh river on one side and a forest on the other, the village seems straight out of RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days.
A class is in session under the scorching sun. Men and women of the village, which has 55 families all of whom live in kuchcha houses, are being taken through various steps in “Aam Bagwani”, or mango plantation. The project has been undertaken under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme, or Nrega, the government’s flagship rural job guarantee scheme.

The setting is great advertisement for welfare schemes sponsored by the government, except that it has taken 10 years for Nrega to reach Maryam Tola. Villagers say they were not part of the Census of 2011 somehow.

They had not even heard of a scheme called the Indira Awas Yojna, launched in June 1985 to fund construction of houses for the poor, until recently. Even Swachch Bharat Mission, the government’s drive to modernise sanitation, has given Maryam Tola a miss. “Aadhe raste mein gum ho jaati hain (The schemes get lost midway),” says Madhav, a villager. This is the first time the village has undertaken actual work under NREGS, having planted 21 mango orchards. Similar projects earlier existed only on paper, the villagers say.






In many ways, Maryam Tola epitomises the challenges and opportunities for the government’s renewed rural push. The government has set a target of building 1 crore houses by 2019, coinciding with the next general elections. A revamped version of the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana, which aims to build houses for the poor, with allocations to households doubled to Rs 1.2 lakh, will be launched next month. The money to build toilets under the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan has been increased to Rs 12,000 in 2014.

The problem is many of the obstacles — delayed payments, incorrect entries in the rolls, mismatched bank account numbers etc — that have long plagued government welfare schemes refuse to go away. Only 55% payments under NREGA are on time, according to government data. Even these payments don’t reach the intended beneficiary.

Delivery Issue
The villagers of Maryam Tola, for example, had requested for houses under the Awaas Yojna a few years ago but have not received any assistance yet. NC Saxena, former rural development secretary, says there are instances where funds have been given but only on paper. “The government should find out how many houses have been constructed on ground and how many people have actually shifted into those houses.”




Indeed, an on-the-ground study by a panel of experts to gauge the impact of rural development schemes has pointed several gaps in government programmes such as delayed payments in NREGA to poor maintenance of roads in Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojna. The exercise, known as the Common Review Mission, will again monitor progress in the villages later this year.

The keystone of the problems is that the beneficiaries themselves were unaware of government programmes. The government is finally taking aim at this shortcoming, already with some success. For this, the rural development ministry launched Integrated Participatory Planning Exercise in 2014 by involving all states. The centrepiece of this exercise is building credibility and greater rural connect by pushing states to rope in people from the villages to decide work done under various schemes.

At Maryam Tola, the villagers joined the “Yojana Banao Abhiyaan” started by the state government this year and were actively involved in planning the works to be undertaken in their village on priority.

The government is also addressing the lack of awareness issue by targeting a key stakeholder whom it believes it has a greater chance of success — women. Many states have managed to mobilise self-help groups of women and appointed a Nrega Resource Person, referred to as NRP Didi. Vijaya Kindo, the NRP for Maryan Tola, says, “Humein laga upar se aati hai yojana. Ab hum khud banate hain” (We felt schemes come from the higher authorities to us but us at the bottom are making them now).

Rural Roadmap
These efforts apart, the government is aligning Nrega with the Unique Identity (UID), or Aadhar, biometric database to make payments directly to beneficiaries and weed out frauds who siphon off money from such schemes. Amarjeet Sinha, rural development secretary, says the major challenge in Nrega was to establish the credibility of the programme. “With the use of IT, Aadhar, leakages have come down.”

The share of timely payments made in 2014 was a measly 28%. The government has also launched the National Electronic Fund Management System for direct transfer of wages to the beneficiary account every day. The facility is now available in 10 states.

The government has essentially adopted a three pronged approach to imbue efficiency into rural development schemes. One, it will establish identity through Aadhar; two, it will ensure eligibility using the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC); and three, guarantee accountability by use of space programmes and geo-tagging of assets created. But Saxena says the big government programmes to alleviate poverty do not require Aadhar. “They have not made much progress because of lack of staff and poor design.”

Sinha admits there are challenges. “Quality of physical record keeping at block level needs improvement.” But he is sanguine about the future. “Our systems are getting stabilised.” The government has its task cut out, however. Over 62% of rural households qualifying as deprived lack education, skills, housing, employment, health, nutrition, water, sanitation, social and gender mobilisation and entitlement, according to SECC data. Of the total 17.9 crore rural households, 13% (2.37 crore) still live in houses with only one room, kuccha walls and kuccha roof.

Viewed against this grim backdrop, the government’s target of doubling farmers’ income by 2022 seems daunting. “You have to grapple with the truth as it is. We have to do something more than ordinary,” says Sinha.

Agents of Change
It would not be impossible however, if the participation of women in government schemes continues in earnest. Take Cheria Urao. Urao, 38, a mother of two, resides in a village called Bansudi, which lies over 100 kms away from Ranchi. She is part of a new wave of women — 3 crore and growing — who are fast emerging as the change agents of rural development by forming Selfhelp Groups across villages of India. Sitting in the “Yojana Banao Abhiyan” office in the Gumla district, Urao says until two years ago, her whole village believed “NREGA toh marega”, referring to the scheme’s wobbly progress.

Things changed last year. For the first time, Urao and several other women in her village took up Nrega work. They built wells and dobhas – farm ponds — to prepare against poor rainfall after discussing the idea within their recently formed Mahila Gram Sangathan. The construction of dug wells and farm ponds has been given the highest priority under Nrega this year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to use funds for drought proofing. Nearly 1 million farm ponds are due to be created this year using Nrega funds.

For people like Urao, accessing those funds into their own bank accounts remains a tedious process. The single counter of the only Bank of India branch near her village has a never ending queue of people. The shoddy internet connectivity in the bank makes it impossible to make any online transfer to the accounts of workers on time. As many are forced to return after a day-long wait in the serpentine line, they are keen now to hold on to Nrega work as alternate employment during the nonfarming season.

Urao says wages are still not on time but the women have stopped giving away job cards to outsiders anymore, an attempt to keep it valid, adding that they even managed to get wages pending for over one year. “We are aware of how the system functions now.”