Treat the disease, not the symptoms

Govind Bhattacharjee1

While schemes for direct benefit transfer of subsidies launched in India can eliminate many operational

inefficiencies, they are inadequate to empower the poor. We can draw lessons from the conditional

cash transfer programmes like Bolsa familia which has helped transform Brazil’s socio-economic

landscape by empowering the poor and the vulnerable. Taking a cue from these, we can begin by

reforming our dysfunctional Panchayat-run schools and primary health centres in villages and then

take a relook into our many dysfunctional welfare programmes which have been draining out the

precious resources without getting concomitant benefits.

The mega welfare schemes like MNREGA have largely remained unsuccessful in alleviating poverty

because of weak design and poor monitoring of implementation, with the result that delivery and

outcome has remained sub-optimal, with poor correlation between the poverty level and utilisation of

MNREGA funds. It is also time we redesign such poverty alleviation programmes with a focus on result

in terms of measurable and achievable outcomes independent of non-economic or political

considerations.

(I)

The administration of massive amounts of subsidies by the Union and State governments for various

purposes has always been plagued by pilferages, wastes and corruption. To prevent this, Government

of India has launched the programme for direct benefit transfer (DBT) of subsidies to the bank

accounts of beneficiaries by linking these accounts to their AADHAR numbers. The scheme expectedly

has brought transparency into the system, while reducing corruption and leakages.

Starting initially with 20 districts and covering scholarships and social security pensions in January

2013, within the next 10 months, DBT was extended to 121 districts covering 21 schemes run by nine

union ministries. These schemes pertained to the welfare of women and children, especially the girl

children, besides providing scholarships to students, including those from the disadvantaged sections.

In November 2014, Government of India had launched a scheme for extending the DBT in respect of

LPG subsidy in 54 districts in 11 states whereby cash equivalents of subsidy amounts - the difference

between market price and subsidised price of LPG cylinders - were to be transferred directly into the

bank accounts of LPG consumers, while making the cylinders available only at a single market prices.

By January 2105, the scheme covered over 15 crore consumers across all 646 districts of the country,

making it the world’s largest direct subsidy roll-out scheme.

There is no doubt that the DBT scheme has increased the efficiency of subsidy administration beyond

measure and it is hoped that the scheme would soon be extended to cover the entire gamut of

subsidies in the country. Here the Government has successfully leveraged technology to improve the

economic lives of the poor, and achieved better targeting of beneficiaries while ensuring economical

and efficient transfer of financial resources to poor households to ‘expand the set of antipoverty tools

the government has in its armoury’, as the Economic Survey for 2015-16 has noted. The survey has

claimed that such well-targeted cash transfers can boost household consumption and asset

1 Published in Indian Economy: A Roadmap Towards Development, Ed. Prof V V Singh, Flying Pen, Jaipur, April 2016, pp 1-13. First two sections of this paper are based on author’s article in the Statesman “Directly Does It”, May 24-25, 2015.

ownership, while increasing the effectiveness of the existing anti-poverty programs. The technological

platform that can facilitate this in a less distortive manner has been named the ‘JAM Number Trinity’,

covering the Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar and Mobile numbers, and the delivery mechanisms that have

been identified are mobile money and post offices with their enviable network of 1.55 lakh offices

reaching out to the remotest corners of the country, which can be used to extend the direct cash

transfer benefits to people living in the remotest outposts of India.

Doubtlessly, cash subsidy is better than price subsidy which distorts markets in various ways that

ultimately hurt the poor, and there cannot be two opinions that DBT is a much better option for rolling

out subsidies. There also cannot be any dispute that in a country that still falters in defining poverty

and fumbles in estimating the number of its poor, eliminating or phasing down of subsidies cannot be

an option. Poor, marginalised and the vulnerable must be provided with adequate safety net, with a

view to ultimately empower them with income-earning capacity so as to obviate the need for any

more subsidy. The question is about the route to such empowerment, and when this question is

considered, the optimism exuded by the Economic Survey that by seamlessly linking the JAM Number

Trinity, once all the subsidies are rolled into a single or a few monthly transfers, the Nirvana of real

progress in terms of direct income support to the poor will be attained seems rather misplaced.

Subsidies, even if targeted carefully and transferred efficiently by eliminating leakages, may not

necessarily transform overnight into an empowering and enabling mechanism, helping the poor to

overcome the hopelessness of their situations. To emerge from poverty, the only viable option is

employment which demands a skill-set. Such a skill-set can be imparted only by quality education, to

which the poor has no access. Unless conditions are created for such empowerment, a subsidy will

always remain what it is, a debilitating dole, making the poor permanently dependent on the

Government for their sustenance and thus making them a captive vote bank for any political party

that holds out the promises of such doles, as we have witnessed in election after elections in our

country. It suits the political class to keep the poor in a permanent state of impoverishment, and

empowering them in real terms by developing employable skill and knowledge is not in the interest

of political parties, given the trends in our current socio-political discourses. The keys to such

empowerment are education and health of the youth – both always go together. We have a plethora

of schemes devised for extending doles to the poor in the name of anti-poverty intervention, but

mechanisms necessary to create and augment the earning capacity of the poor to overcome poverty

are singularly absent in these schemes.

Seven decades since independence from exploitative colonial rules and eleven five year plans which

have doled out lakhs of crores of rupees through countless anti-poverty schemes have failed even to

eradicate absolute poverty characterised by severe deprivation of basic human needs. A quarter of

population still remains illiterate and suffer from serious handicaps arising from lack of quality

healthcare, drinking water, nutrition and sanitation. Public infrastructure for primary, secondary and

college education remains pathetic in most places, barring a few isolated islands in the elite

institutions managed and funded by the Central Government. As the Annual Status of Education

Report published every year by the educational NGO Pratham indicates, half of the children in our

primary schools are nowhere near their class-age appropriate learning levels. Delivery of merit goods

and services like education and health remains dismal, if not non-existent, in most states. Thus millions

of graduates and post-graduates emerge every year from our temples of learning without acquiring

any employable skill-set or knowledge. Public healthcare also presents a similar dismal scenario, with

services available at most of the primary and secondary heath centres remaining far below optimal.

We cannot dream of achieving higher or double-digit growth rates touted by our leaders if the vast

multitudes of our rural, non-city dwelling people are left out of the growth trajectory, who are unable

to afford the cost of private education or healthcare and have access only to the mostly dysfunctional

municipal/ panchayat schools or equally dysfunctional government dispensaries. The end result is that

they remain permanently at the bottom of the pyramid, adding little value to the economic system,

and deriving little benefit and hardly any value in their lives.

The most serious problem that continues to plague our delivery system is the state’s very limited

implementation capacity to target and deliver services to the poor. It does not arise from any

constraint of resources; in fact, the Government spends about Rs 3.78 lakh crore -more than 4 percent

of our GDP - every year on providing subsidies on a few commodities and services like rice, wheat,

pulses, sugar, kerosene, LPG, naphtha, water, electricity, diesel, fertiliser, iron ore and railways.

Compare this to the Central Government’s total plan outlay of Rs 4.26 lakh crore as per the revised

estimates of 2014-15 to understand the magnitude of Government subsidy-expenditure which serves

only a very limited purpose for a limited span of time. It is not simply the efficient allocation of

resources which can be the route to the Nirvana as so consummately wished in the Economic Survey.

It is actually a question of outcomes, for which the focus need to be shifted from restructuring of

economic reforms to restructuring of our delivery system.

Some of the countries have successfully bridged the gap between the two by novel designing of the

social welfare schemes and addressed their inherent structural incapacities, and in doing so, not only

have lifted millions of their poor out of poverty by empowering them in real terms, but also eliminated

absolute poverty and boosted real disposable income in the hands of people. Brazil and Mexico are

often cited as examples of what a well-designed Government program can achieve. Much has been

talked about Brazil’s Bolsa Família program launched by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil

from 2003 to 2011. Successful implementation of social sector welfare programs like Bolsa Família to

address the question of poverty and Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) to combat hunger were the major

hallmarks of his presidency and have redefined the socio-economic landscape in his country, from

which we also can draw lot of lessons.

(II)

Bolsa Família, meaning ‘Family Allowance’ in Portuguese, is a part of federal assistance programme of

the Brazilian Government. It is not simply a poverty-reduction strategy like our MNREGA, but is meant

to address the needs of the poor and fill in the existing gaps and inequities in the delivery and actual

outcomes of education, health and social assistance programmes of the Government. To understand

its role, we have go back to Brazil’s socio-economic conditions in the 1990s.

Till the early 1990s, Brazil was mired in a web of crises, much like our own. About 45 per cent of the

population lived below the poverty line - half of them sunk in absolute poverty. With Gini coefficient

measuring at more than 0.6, it also had one of the highest income inequalities in the world. Poverty,

exclusion and backwardness made the country a potential volcano, ready to erupt at any moment.

Under the new 1988 constitution, the country undertook extensive reforms by liberalisation of trade

and financial sectors, decentralisation and deregulation, elimination of forex barriers, privatisation

and enforcement of fiscal discipline which together bolstered the market and generated additional

income. The additional income was meant to be spent on social welfare programmes and by the

beginning of the new millennium, there was a horde of these programmes, much like in our country,

often with overlapping objectives and unclear goals. Elimination of hunger, reduction of poverty,

improving delivery of quality education, healthcare and ensuring gender equality were the focus of

most of these programmes. Different executing agencies, diverse spending modalities, multiple

funding sources as well as diverse information systems and duplication of efforts were affecting the

implementation of these programmes, much like in our own plan schemes. Some of these

programmes also featured a component of cash transfer, like our DBT; some even transferred the cash

on fulfilment of certain conditions, making it a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) as opposed to DBT.

These conditionalities were based on two objectives: (1) to alleviate poverty today and (2) to increase

the poor people’s stock of human capital for tomorrow. To fulfil the first, identified poor families were

given program payments in cash. The second was achieved by making those payments conditional to

specified behaviours on the part of the beneficiaries, like compulsory enrolment and attendance of

their children in schools and their compulsory immunisation and regular public health check-ups in

government-run clinics.

After Lula da Silva became President in 2003, all these diverse programmes were integrated and

unified into Bolsa Familia, with redefined vision, objectives and goals which focussed on access to

social services like health, education and social assistance as much as upon the outcomes of the

programmes on a sustained basis, by improving food and nutritional security and achieving a synergy

between different government programmes. As Soares (2011, 55) had said, “The evolution of Bolsa

Família is the story of a fight for legitimacy in the sphere of social protection policies in Brazil.” It also

put a target to cover all the poor families, estimated at 11.1 million by 2011.

Under the programme, cash benefits were extended to indigent families depending on their levels of

income and impoverishment, but subject to certain conditions which included (i) compulsory

enrolment of all children in schools; (ii) their minimum 85 percent attendance every month to be

reported by the schools; and (iii) regular visits to health centres and following the immunisation

calendar of the Ministry of Health, to be reported by the health units at the municipal level. It thus

provided a minimum income to poor and vulnerable families, while ensuring to lift their children out

of poverty in future, by providing them with skill and knowledge and ensuring their health.

While the unification of various programmes and redefining of the objectives streamlined the

programmes and processes, the constraints the nation faced in implementing the programme were

truly formidable. These basically arose from lack of capacity, just like in our case. How does the

Government set up a quality infrastructure of hundreds of schools with qualified teachers and health

clinics with qualified doctors to cover all the targeted families? Without the teachers, doctors and

schools and clinics, the programme would only remain in paper. And setting up any kind of school will

not do - quality was the keyword here, without which the objective of creating a stock of future human

capital capable of adding to the productive capacity and earning incomes was unachievable. Side by

side, a real-time information system needed to be created for recording school attendance and clinic

check-ups. Fund, however, was not a major constraint. International aid agencies also pledged their

support to the programme on the understanding that quality education would boost economic growth

by raising incomes and also improve the quality of life. Besides, the programme was inexpensive - total

investment in the programme was only 0.2 percent of GDP in 2003 which subsequently increased to

0.43% in 2012. But creation of the requisite massive capacity was a daunting challenge not addressable

in the short term; hence the programme had to be rolled out in phases, starting with a few

municipalities in 2003, and gradually extending after creating capacity in terms of establishment of

schools and clinics with qualified teachers and doctors, to cover the entire country by 2011.

In 2009, the ceiling of 11.1 million beneficiaries was revised upwards to 12.9 million families, also to

include the non-poor but vulnerable families that ran the risk of sliding below the poverty line; this

led to increase in programme expenditure to 0.43 percent of GDP. In 2012, the coverage was extended

further to 13.7 million families comprising 56 million people, making it the largest CCT programme in

the world. The high coverage and good targeting of the programme led to astounding results. Within

a decade, by 2012, poverty in Brazil had fallen to just 9 per cent of the population; extreme poverty

almost disappeared as per capita income rose from US$ 3000 in 2003 to US$ 13000 in 2012. There

were distinct improvements in the job market and real minimum labour wage also increased, and

inequality reduced consequently. Besides, there was no negative impact on labour supply, unlike

sometimes observed in case of our MNREGA. Bolsa Familia’s contribution on the reduction of poverty,

inequality and extreme poverty was estimated to be very significant by all scholars and evaluators.

Other Latin American countries also replicated similar CCT programmes with equivalent measures of

success, like Oportunidades in Mexico or Chile Solidario in Chile for extending support to impoverished

families. These programmes focussed on social and economic inclusion while facilitating easier access

of the poor to Government’s social sector programmes. Since then, many developing countries had

set up some kind of CCT programmes. Nearer home, Indonesia has implemented an unconditional

cash transfer programme called Bantuan Langsung Tunai to mitigate the impact of fuel subsidy

reductions for over 19 million poor and near-poor households like our LPG subsidy programme, while

a CCT programme called Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH) started in 2007 now has been implemented

in all its 33 provinces, covering around 1.5 million - about a quarter of the very poor Indonesian

households. The objectives of PKH are very similar to those of Bolsa Familia, to reduce poverty in the

short run by aiding immediate consumption of the poor households, while investing in future

generations through improved health and education to develop future human capital for making the

final frontal attack on poverty in the long run.

Can we emulate some of these initiatives in our country after making the necessary adaptations and

modifications to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery mechanisms of our anti-

poverty programme? Can we make our village school and primary health centre something like a

model school and a model health clinic? If we can, it will be a win-win situation for all.

As Brazil’s example has taught us, successful implementation needs building up of capacity at the

levels of municipalities by sourcing local talent and resources, and to extend the programme coverage

in a phased manner only after the requisite capacity has been created in this manner. We have our

village panchayats at bottom of the pyramid which are in direct contact with the grassroots level. It

will not be difficult to equip them adequately for exercising effective monitoring at the local level.

Suppose the Panchayat schools are to be manned by local talent - qualified, trained and adequately

compensated. For carrying out the basic immunisation and nutritional checks of students in these

schools, we may not need full-fledged doctors; paramedics produced with lesser effort may suffice.

Careful designing and planning can take care of both these requirements in the medium term. Once

we launch a CCT programme, say in a few Panchayats to begin with, after meeting these requirements,

its coverage can be extended in a phased manner, concomitant with the creation of required

additional capacity. This can then transform the rural landscape – with students coming out of

Panchayat schools with knowledge and skill appropriate to their age, with health and hope, armed to

combat poverty. This will also stop migration of local talent to cities and derive better synergy from

the existing infrastructure. The total additional expenditure will only be miniscule compared to what

we are spending today for our anti-poverty progrmmes and interventions. We may not realise the

results in the short term, but national objectives can always have a wider horizon so that the schemes

may be designed for providing the intended benefits in the long run. The questions are: Will a

Government take the plunge and dare to set its vision far into the future? Will it ever think of an

alternative strategy for alleviation of poverty other than the dependency-inducing doles?

(III)

It is also time to take a relook into our many dysfunctional welfare programmes which have been

draining out precious resources without getting the concomitant benefits. The mother of all these

programmes is of course the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme

(MNREGP) that had been institutionalised by an Act of Parliament, the Mahatma Gandhi National

Rural Employment Guarantee Act, 2005.

Rs 33,700 crore has been earmarked for MNREGP in the Union budget for the current year, and similar

amounts were provided every year throughout the last decade. More than Rs 300,000 crore has thus

been fed into MNREGP so far, but their effect in making any significant reduction of poverty as a whole

for the country still remains to be seen, despite contrary claims by some economists and supporters

of these programme. The issue has become so emotive that even a mild criticism of this programme

evokes the strongest and loudest chorus of condemnation. Even after a new government had taken

over, despite expectations to the contrary, its budget allocation was not reduced; rather there was

even a promise of enhancing the allocations by Rs 5000 crore depending upon the tax buoyancy. The

funds meant for this programme will of course be spent in and by the states, direct transfer of funds

having now been abolished, so the capacity of the state to utilise the funds productively remains an

issue – because these capacities vary widely between the states. It must be recalled that NREGA was

a major flagship program of the Congress Government and the programme was credited with voting

the UPA Government to power for a consecutive second time in 2009. But before taking any decision

to scale the programme up or down, it is extremely important to undertake an objective assessment

of the pros and cons of the.

The welfarists who had steered the programme and exercised considerable authority in the decision

making process with the then government in power, without themselves being a part of either the

legislative or the executive and hence shielded from any accountability, have apparently been blind

to the huge opportunity costs of the resources being spent on this and other similar programmes. The

utility of humongous programmes like MNREGA, Food Security and Universal Health Coverage etc.,

demanding astronomical sums on schemes whose assumptions, methods of implementation and

outcomes have all along been suspect and unsubstantiated by evidence. But these powerful groups,

like the members of the now-defunct National Advisory Council headed by the President of the

Congress party, bulldozed their way and forced a Government that had little or no say in the actual

governance, spend huge sums of money on these populist programmes by enacting a host of right-

based legislations - without having to bother about the cost to secure these rights as well as the cost

of administrative mechanisms to extend these rights to the intended beneficiaries. It has been hinted

by many commentators that their interventions were guided more were by electoral reasons than by

concerns of growth and development. The result was the colossal leakages of public funds, weak or

almost non-existent vigilance and monitoring mechanisms on the use of these funds and sub-optimal

achievement of outcomes, evidence of which can be found aplenty in the reports of the Comptroller

& Auditor General of India. Let is take the case of MNREGP.

MNREGP combined several anti-poverty employment generation programmes and was launched in

2005 with the objective of bringing livelihood security of households in rural areas by providing at

least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in every financial year to every household whose

adult members volunteer for unskilled manual work. Creation of durable assets and strengthening the

livelihood resource base of the rural poor were other important objectives of the Scheme. The work

was to be provided at the minimum wage rate and, as far as possible, within a radius of five kms of

the applicant’s village. The principal implementing agencies of the scheme were the gram panchayats

(GPs). MNREGP emphasized community participation in planning, implementation, social audit and

transparency and placed a complete ban on the use of contractors. By 2008, MNREGP’s outreach had

extended to the whole of rural India. Funding was in the ratio of 75 percent to 25 percent between

the centre and the implementing states.

The following analysis is based on the CAG report on MNREGA implementation.2

1. Even though the average wage cost or wages paid was rising, the benefits to a rural household

was negated by the decline in employment provided per household (Appendix: Chart-1).

2. While representation of women increased to around 48 per cent during the last three years, the

share of both SCs and STs continued to decline (Chart-2).

3. While the number of works taken up increased steadily, the number of works completed

declined by 28 per cent in 2011-12 compared to 2010-11, defeating the primary objective of

providing livelihood security and creation of assets (Chart-3).

4. MGNREGS was the major poverty eradication programme of the UPA Government. While at the

aggregate level there was some correlation between the number of rural poor in a state and the

number of households given employment under MGNREGA, with some notable exceptions like

Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal which seemed to have

made better utilisation of MGNREGA funds, while Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh – the three

most poverty stricken states of the country, have shown poor utilization of MGNREGS funds

along with Maharastra (Chart-4).

5. Bihar, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh accounted for 46 per cent of the rural poor but utilized

about 20 per cent of the funds and consequently only 20 per cent of total households were

provided employment under the Scheme. In fact, only four states (Andhra Pradesh, Madhya

Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) accounted for 50 per cent of the total expenditure made

under the Scheme. There was little correlation between poverty level in a state and the

implementation of MGNREGS. As the CAG report states categorically, “the poorest of poor

were not fully able to exercise their rights under MGNREGA”. This directly contradicts what its

advocates have always been claiming to justify its continuance in the same form.

CAG Report is silent on the reasons for the lack of any such correlation, but they are not difficult to

divine. Poor do not get to overcome their poverty until they are empowered to do so, and

empowerment comes only through education, health and employable skill-set. Programmes like

2 Report no.-6 of 2013-Union Government (Ministry of Rural Development) - Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Performance Audit of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

MNREGP do not facilitate any of these and merely provides subsistence-level aid, which may only

alleviate their poverty only temporarily. In fact, instead of addressing the roots of poverty, they only

perpetuate it by denying the poor the only tools – education, health and skill – that can eradicate their

poverty through generation of wealth in the economy and providing meaning employment with

growth. These programmes only endeavour to keep them below the bottom of the development

ladder, by ensuring mere subsistence without any real empowerment. It is in this context that the

conditional cash transfer schemes become even more relevant.

CAG report numerous instances of inefficiencies and poor internal control and monitoring in the

implementation of MNREGP. A few randomly-selected snapshot of these observations may provide

some interesting insights to the readers:

Obtaining a job card was no guarantee for employment when demanded by the beneficiary. CAG

detected over 47,687 cases where beneficiaries were not provided employment on demand, and

CAG audits check only a small sample of the total eligible population.

Even after receiving employment, CAG detected widespread instances of non-payment and

delayed payment of wages in 23 states and non-maintenance or incorrect maintenance of basic

records in 18 to 54 per cent of the test checked GPs.

Works of Rs 2,252 crore which were undertaken under the Scheme were not permissible. The

expenditure on works for Rs 6,547 crore did not result in creation of durable assets. CAG detected

diversion of MNREGA funds for other uses in a large number of states. The statutory 60:40 wage-

material ratio was also not maintained. The Ministry itself relaxed this provision.

No wonder, therefore, that the delivery and outcome of such schemes would always remain sub-

optimal, and instead of reducing poverty, they would only cause the draining of scarce resources.

References: Kapur, Devesh, Partha Mukhopadhyay and Arvind Subramanian. 2008.

“The Case for Direct Cash Transfers to the Poor”, Economic & Political Weekly, April 12

Sinha, Dipa. 2015. “Cash for Food—A Misplaced Idea”, Economic & Political Weekly, April 18

Soares, Fabio Veras. 2011. “Brazil’s Bolsa Família: A Review”, Economic & Political Weekly, May 21

Appendix

Chart-1: Average wages (in Rs) and employment per household

Chart-2: Share of SC, ST and Women in Employment Generation (%)

0

20

40

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120

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2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12

Employment Per RuralHousehold (in days)

Average wage cost perperson-day

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10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12

Women

Scheduled Tribes (STs)

Scheduled Castes (SCs)

Chart-3: Works taken up under MGNREGS

Chart-4: Poverty Levels and Average Annual Number of Households Provided Employment in

States

2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 2010-11 2011-12

Works taken up 17.88 27.75 46.17 50.99 82.51

Works completed 8.23 12.14 22.59 25.9 18.56

Works in progress 12.53 17.31 21.45 49.26 63.95

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