These are the gaps the Centre must fill to ensure 100% coverage of welfare beneficiaries

Marking eight years of the National Democratic Alliance in power at the Centre, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 28 emphasised the commitment of the government by announcing a “100%-coverage” target for social welfare programmes.

Simply put, it means that promised government entitlements should reach all intended beneficiaries, without leaving anyone out. This is a worthy goal. But the government will have to bridge two major gaps in the country’s social protection delivery in order to achieve it: information and accountability.

Lack of information is a barrier in two ways. First, not being aware of various initiatives prevents the intended beneficiaries from registering for schemes.

India has an extremely complex social protection system where benefits are thinly spread across a number of central and state government schemes. This makes it difficult for citizens to identify which benefit may be available to them through which scheme.

Second, the information available to the government about Indian citizens is incomplete and outdated. This means that setting targets itself is difficult and it further complicates the process of determining eligibility.

This is especially true for social assistance programmes where targeting is based on what is referred to as means testing. Means-tested targeted programmes provide benefits to households below a certain income level. Having this data is critical in determining what the income threshold should be set at, but also who earns less or more than that threshold.

Barring a few schemes such as the rural employment guarantee scheme under MGNREGA – the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act – and farmer support initiative PM-Kisan that allow for self-registration, most depend on the Socio-Economic Caste Census database for identifying beneficiaries.

The Socio-Economic Caste Census database has come under the scanner for its inaccuracy. The onus of proving eligibility often falls on the beneficiaries. Given the targeted nature of most welfare schemes, the enrolment process comprises stringent checks that require the beneficiary to submit documents ranging from proof of residence and income to employment bonafides.

An inability to produce copies of necessary documents, any spelling errors and data inconsistencies in beneficiary records make verification difficult. Worse, this is not a one-time process. The beneficiaries are often required to submit documents again to be enrolled into new schemes. This is because different states and government departments rarely share information with each other.

A few civil society organisations and private companies such as Working People’s Coalition and Bandhu have tried to address this issue – at least at the citizen level – by curating information for informal workers and creating digital platforms to match users with schemes they are eligible for.

There are also some good examples within the government – such as Karnataka’s Kutumba Project. It is an attempt at creating a comprehensive database for an Integrated Social Protection System. The idea is to create a social registry and an Entitlement Management System that the government can use for automatic disbursal of benefits to eligible citizens, without them having to even apply.

Navigating the information barriers to eligibility and enrolment is just one part of the problem. The likelihood of receiving benefits is also affected by errors during the processing of benefits or in ensuring that once processed, entitlements actually reach the beneficiaries.

At the processing stage, improper Aadhaar seeding – where the Aadhaar number is linked with identification or benefit documents – and blocked bank accounts often lead to the widespread exclusion of many beneficiaries.

Research by the firm Dvara shows that this is a major problem in processing payments under the Direct Benefit Transfer, and in determining work allocation and processing wage payments in the rural employment guarantee scheme. At the last-mile delivery, the unavailability of cash-out points such as ATMs or operational issues of network and biometric failures can become bottlenecks.

In schemes such as the Public Distribution System, discretionary denial by fair price shop officers often leads to eligible beneficiaries being left out. Weak accountability structures at each step of the process make these issues difficult to resolve, causing wrongful exclusion to continue unchecked.

Grievance redressal mechanisms set up by the government are often too complicated to navigate, especially for beneficiaries with low literacy levels. Gram Vaani, a social technology company incubated at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, has demonstrated how simple systems such as Interactive Voice Response, or IVR, can be used to help beneficiaries register a grievance, which can then be published on communication platforms and addressed by authorities.

To the government’s credit, it has recognised some of these issues and is making efforts to bridge the information and operational gaps with initiatives such as the E-shram portal for creating a National Database of Unorganised Workers and Integrated Management of Public Distribution System to make ration cards portable.

But the approach is piecemeal. Any plans of meaningfully expanding social protection cover to the vulnerable will require identifying and plugging leakages in the end-to-end delivery of social protection in India.

Nikita Kwatra is an Associate at Artha at Artha India Research Advisors. Artha Global is an independent policy research and consulting organisation based in London and Mumbai.