“My father’s pension has not landed in his account for the past two years. We got this information through RTI. What will we do if this happens in case of cash transfer for food?” asked Poonam, who stays in Delhi’s Malviya Nagar.

“Will they close down schools because they cannot manage proper education,” asked Sumitra from Munirka village.

The two women were part of the third day of a Jan Sansad (People’s Parliament), organised by about 50 civil society groups on issues such as basic entitlements and services.

Aruna Roy, a member of the National Advisory Council to the UPA Chairperson, opposed the Government’s move on direct cash transfer of subsidies. “Corruption cannot be reduced by technology alone. This is just a move to control and track people and push the UID (unique identity) project,” she added.

Only label change

Reetika Khera, an IIT Delhi professor, said just the label was being changed. “People are anyway getting pensions, scholarships in bank accounts.

The Government is basically linking these with Aadhaar cards. She said dismantling public distribution system was not the way out to plug leakages. Citing the example of Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Tamil Nadu, Kera said Odisha had managed to reduce leakages from 75 per cent to 30 per cent, whereas there was only 10 per cent leakage in Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh now, she added.

JNU economics professors, Praveen Jha and Ravi Srivastava said the direct cash transfer scheme would not work in countries that have large poor and marginal populations that are dependent on public provisioning for basic entitlements such as healthcare, food and education.

Srivastava said, “It is not a bad idea to give Aadhaar cards, but before they start implementing this scheme, they must realise that there are millions of unorganised migrant workers, who have neither basic entitlements nor guarantee of citizenship.” 

aditi.n@thehindu.co.in

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