India will pay billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new programme that aims to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system.
Previously, officials only handed out cash to the poor after taking a cut - if they didn’t keep all of it for themselves - and were known to enroll fake recipients or register unqualified people. The programme inaugurated on Tuesday would see welfare money directly deposited into recipients’ bank accounts and require them to prove their identity with biometric data, such as fingerprints or retina scans.
Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has described the venture as “nothing less than magical,” but critics accuse the government of hastily pushing through a complex programme in a country where millions don’t have access to electricity or paved roads, let alone neighbourhood banks.
The programme is loosely based on Brazil’s widely praised Bolsa Familia programme, which has helped lift more than 19 million people out of poverty since 2003. It will begin in 20 of the country’s 640 districts on Tuesday, affecting more than 200,000 recipients, and will be progressively rolled out in other areas in the coming months, Chidambaram said on Monday. The country has 440 million people living below the poverty line.
“In a huge new experiment like this you should expect some glitches. There may be a problem here and there, but these will be overcome by our people,” Chidambaram said.
He appealed for patience with the programme, which he called “a game changer for governance.”