Serve the Poor, Uproot Corruption: Modi’s Moto in India
The Government of India (GOI) took a necessary and bold step in its fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by announcing a three-week long nationwide shutdown effective from March 25th, 2020. This proactive step was taken relatively early in the progression of the disease so as to avoid the fates afflicting New York, Italy, Spain and Wuhan which had been disastrously late in taking social isolation and lockdown measures. India had approximately 500 cases and less than 17 deaths at the time of announcement of the lockdown. Every drastic step has repercussions, and this step brought with it legitimate concerns of economic mayhem, loss of wages and adverse impacts to the economically handicapped.
Keeping sight of the same, GOI announced a 1,700 billion rupees (~USD 23 Bn) relief package for the economically poor within 36 hours of the lockdown announcement, intended to provide them with money and food. The finance minister announced that one aspect of the package would focus on cash payments by direct benefit transfer of money directly into beneficiaries’ bank accounts and the other aspect would focus on food delivery to ensure food security. In doing so, the GOI has taken a pragmatic approach that is both compassionate in its spirit and immediate in its impact towards the most vulnerable part of the society. More relief packages were promised on an ongoing basis.
Prime Minister Gareeb Kalyan Yohna (PM poor welfare program) will provide additional quantities of free wheat, rice, and lentils on top of the regular amount and will cover 800 million people which makes up for 2/3rd of India’s population. Approximately 86.9 million farmers will receive an additional Rs 2,000 on top of the yearly benefit of Rs. 6,000 directly into their bank accounts under Prime Minister Kisan Yojna (PM farmer program). Fifty million families covered under Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) will also get increased contributions. 204 million women will receive additional money in their bank accounts for the next three months under the Jan Dhan scheme. 30 million disabled people, widows, and poor pensioners will also receive money in their bank accounts under the relief package. 83 million females will also receive free cooking gas cylinders for the next three months under the Ujjwala program.
“It’s a very well-defined package, reinforcing government’s intent that no one should be deprived of basic facilities in today’s stressed times,” said State bank of India chairman Rajnish Kumar. “We are hopeful of more calibrated responses in coming weeks as the impact of the pandemic unfolds.”
India already is home to Aayushman Bharat, a flagship project from Modi that started in 2018. This is the world’s largest government-sponsored and fully state-funded health insurance scheme which covers health care expenses up to five lakh rupees ($6,650) per family per year of the economically bottom 40% population, covering a staggering 500 million people. On top of that, new health insurance of 5 million rupees for each health care worker was announced for approximately 2 million health care providers who may get sick during the COVID pandemic.
A critical factor behind the implementation of these and other social welfare schemes has been the foresighted implementation and success of the “Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile trinity” under the first term of the Modi government. This includes the world’s largest national biometric identity program, Aadhaar, coupled with high mobile phone penetration rates achieved at scale in the past few years. All of this has revolutionized financial inclusion in India by delivering Aadhar digital biometric identity cards to 1.23 billion people as of December 2018, over 1.21 billion mobile phone connections and concomitant direct cash and other benefit transfer schemes for the vulnerable that cut out the historical nexus of corrupt middlemen, politicians, and businessmen proficient in siphoning funds between the source and the sink.
In 2014, only 53 percent of Indian adults had a bank account, compared to 62 percent average globally, but the extraordinary push for bank accounts through the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) during the past few years by the NDA government under Modi has increased this number to 80 percent as of 2017 and will be even higher at the time of delivery of the relief package. Over 344.3 million bank accounts have been opened under the PMJDY as of 2019 and the GOI has saved more than 510 billion rupees in 2018–19 from going into corrupt hands and duplicative schemes while providing social benefits to over 590 million people under 439 different subsidy programs via direct benefit transfer by implementing these strategies. It was the massive financial inclusion envisioned during the first term of NDA from 2014–2019 through the flagship scheme of Jan Dhan Yojna with Aadhaar and Mobile numbers (JAM) that has ended up being a gamechanger in delivering the benefits rapidly to the vulnerable population and keeping away the corrupt vultures from looting their money. This, among many other measures, has resulted in a decrease of people living in extreme poverty from 268 million in 2011 to 50 million in 2019 according to World Data Lab.
There has been some criticism around the relief package amount — some belief the 1,700 Billion Rupees corpus to be insufficient and recommend that number to be closer to 5,000 Billion Rupees. A much larger stimulus and relief package was later announced after few weeks. Ironically, the largest corruption scandal in India also cost roughly 1700 billion rupees to the nation’s taxpayers during the allocation of 2G spectrum licenses in 2010–11 under the leadership of UPA/Manmohan Singh according to the CAG report.
There is no doubt that a lot more needs to be done to take care of the most vulnerable segments of the society and simultaneously fight the COVID-19 pandemic by strict enforcement of social distancing, handwashing precautions, and optimum utilization of limited health care resources. However, it is in the interest of public health and morale at-large to acknowledge the pragmatic, rapid, and substantial relief and preventive measures adopted by GOI in this battle against an (almost) invisible enemy. As a people, Indians are united in spirit and indomitable in their resistance to this global pandemic.
Author: Vikas Jain, vj30939@gmail.com
