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Cash or Credit-Continuing Dilemma
The DBT programme, if it manages to overcome
the challenges, might well confound its critics and create a whole new paradigm
for delivering of entitlements in India
The Direct
Benefits Transfers (DBT) programme was announced with much fanfare
as a “game changer”. Even before it could be rolled out in 43 districts, the FM
rolled back the programme to 23 districts for the pilots, within a fortnight of
the announcement of the programme. Since then much air-time has been devoted to
the merits and demerits of this programme with the debate largely along ideological
lines.
What
needs to be clearly acknowledged that despite these initial setbacks, the idea of
the DBT programme that has been announced is not just unexceptionable, it is a
move in the right direction that was long overdue. Cash transfers are not a new
idea, not even in India, and most of the programmes that have been brought
within the ambit of this programme are existing cash transfers. The programme
that has been announced is not creating any new cash transfers but is instead consolidating
the delivery of the existing schemes.
The
real “game changer” in this is two-fold: the idea of universal financial inclusion and, the timely transfer of benefits to entitlement holders without intermediaries and unnecessary
paperwork. The use of Aadhar
enabled authentication as the backbone of this system is likely to plug
leakages that are built into these programmes. The technological/ IT
architecture as well as the proposed financial architecture, have the potential
of transformational change in rural areas, not very dissimilar to the revolution
that rural telephony and mobile telephony have unleashed over the past two
decades. Critics of the DBT, in failing to recognize this transformational
potential, are doing themselves a disservice.
