India's supremacy in the frontier area of information technology (IT) and how it leveraged this vantage position to carve a niche for itself in the global software services business is universally known and acknowledged. But what is not so widely known is the unobtrusive use of this technological tool in transforming governance in India. This is borne out by a bunch of e-governance initiatives at the central and sub-national (state) level. Due stress is now being devoted to the harnessing of ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) for improving efficiency, competitiveness and delivery of social welfare programs the government administers to make a durable dent on poverty and deprivations, the twin maladies which afflict legions of poor across the country. Exactly seven years ago a national e-governance program was approved, with a vision to provide public services to citizens at affordable cost. A major move was the setting up of the Unique Identification Authority to issue identification numbers (Aadhaar) for all Indian citizens. This program is fastened on the firm belief that ICT-induced development gains in areas such as health, education and governance and small and micro business creation and expansion are too good to be gainsaid. Even as the move to confer every resident with an Aadhaar number (based on biometrics) that would be linked to their bank account has been progressing in a phased manner pan-India, the government of India has come out with the Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) strategy to provide direct benefits to poor availing of various social entitlement schemes. The DBT as it is christened recently aims that entitlements and benefits to people could be made over directly to them through biometrics-based Aadhaar-linked bank accounts, thus pruning a plethora of intermediaries, choking points of leakage and delays in the system of delivery to the eventual beneficiary. The DBT is only a new dispensation and is not a new scheme as it aims at making the payments under existing government or public good schemes such as pensions, scholarships for students, rural employment guarantee wages and payments to ASHA and Anganwadi workers reach people faster and more efficiently. In what genuine ways the new system would help the common man foremost is that the Aadhaar and the use of biometrics would ensure that the right person gets the payment. Second, it will ensure that the money reaches the beneficiaries directly, on time and in full. This is particularly a matter of immense relief to innumerable pensioners under social welfare benefit scheme because social pensions reach the beneficiary once every four to six months in many parts of the country could now reach the beneficiary's bank account on the first of every month. Third, it will further ensure that money reaches the doorstep of the beneficiary, thanks to a vast network of business correspondents (BCs) on the ground with micro ATMs would allow payments to be made contiguous to where people live — in grocery stores, in Panchayat (local government) offices, in schools, at home — and not only at bank branches, ensuring that the poor get the services akin to the rich and middle-class in the country receive. As any system of this gigantic dimension entails teething troubles at the inception, the government has proposed to move ahead only gradually and with extreme caution. Hence it proposed a modest beginning encompassing roughly 34 schemes — largely scholarships, pensions and other benefit payments — in 43 districts as a pilot project. This was launched on Jan. 1, 2013. The whole system once in place would help the government bridge the delivery deficit of various welfare schemes besides providing the wherewithal to the weak and vulnerable to eke out a better existence over the long haul. — G.Srinivasan is a deputy editor for Frontline Magazine, New Delhi
