The state of Jharkhand was recently awarded by the rural development ministry for its performance in implementing ‘direct benefit transfer’ (DBT) in the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the national social assistance pensions (NSAP) schemes.

In MGNREGA, the state stood first in the country while it came second in pensions. The irony is that if one were to give an award for the extent of havoc caused by DBT in welfare programmes, Jharkhand will be amongst the top performers in that list as well.

The term DBT itself is misleading. It is used by the government to refer to its strategy of linking recipients of various welfare programmes with their unique identity (UID) numbers and transferring the subsidies through Aadhaar-based payments bridge (APB). But what is often overlooked is that even before Aadhaar-based payments started, subsidies of several welfare programmes were already being transferred ‘directly’ to the bank/post office accounts of recipients.

The Jharkhand government has linked almost all pensioners’ accounts and MGNREGA job cards of active workers with their Aadhaar and most of the wages and pensions are paid through APB.

In February 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said that DBT had helped in saving Rs 56,000 crores by removing crores of ‘fake’ beneficiaries from welfare programmes. The figure went up to Rs 90,000 crore in his speech on August 15, 2018. The government is yet to disclose how it arrived at these figures.

A closer look at MGNREGA and NSAP in Jharkhand reveals that these claims are definitely questionable, to say the least. It also shows that Aadhaar is leading to substantial exclusion and violations of entitlements of workers and pensioners.

Ghosts all around

In 2017-18, more than three lakh MGNREGA job cards were cancelled by the Jharkhand government. While the government claims that Aadhaar helped in removing ‘ghost’ workers, evidence from ground suggests that a staggering number of workers was deleted from the MGNREGA database as their UID numbers were not linked with their job cards. As a result, those workers are now denied their MGNREGA entitlements.

For example, Fulmait Devi of Lohardaga district could not get work as her job card was cancelled by the administration. Sukhni Devi of the same village is yet to be paid for the work done a few months back as her name was stuck off her family’s job card. In fact, it was done at a time when she was working in an MGNREGA scheme.

Interestingly, when the issue was flagged, the Block Programme Officer admitted that both their cards were cancelled as they were not linked with Aadhaar.

At a consultation meeting organised by the Rural Development Department in July 2017, several frontline functionaries and officers admitted that it was a general practice to cancel job cards that were not linked with Aadhaar to meet the target of 100% Aadhaar-seeding.

The Jharkhand government claimed in September 2017 that it had struck off three lakh ‘fake’ pensioners, with the help of Aadhaar, from the social security pensions list. According to the government’s response to a Right to Information (RTI) application, only 7% of the total deleted pensioners (of seven districts that shared the information) could be termed fraudulent. And the proportion of ‘fake’ beneficiaries in that list was miniscule.

Since 2016-17, several pensioners have been stuck off the pensions list as their UID numbers were not linked with the pension account. A survey of 103 deleted pensioners in Khunti district in December 2017 found 35% of them to be alive and genuine pensioners. For example, Bipta Nagesiya of Lohardaga was deleted from the list of old-age pensions as his pension scheme and bank account were not linked with Aadhaar.

The Jharkhand government claims that removal of ‘fake’ and ‘duplicate’ workers and pensioners led to a saving of Rs 204 crore in MGNREGA and Rs 200 crore in NSAP respectively. Interestingly several persons were deleted as part of a regular exercise of updating the lists by removing the ones who had died or permanently migrated.

Even though the method of calculation of these saving amounts was not shared, government sources have revealed how the figure of MGNREGA-savings was arrived at. The total number of cancelled cards was multiplied with the wage rate for that year (Rs 168 per day) and the average number of days of work that a household got (around 40 days) in that year. And not to mention, these figures constitute the ‘DBT-savings’ repeatedly cited by the Narendra Modi government.

The never-ending wait for wages and pensions

The government claims that Aadhaar simplified and fastened the transfer of cash entitlements to the intended recipient. But the experiences of pensioners and MGNREGA workers in Jharkhand show that Aadhaar-based payments have increased the uncertainty of getting wages or pensions on time.

A major reason for non-payment or delay in payment to MGNREGA workers is rejection of wage transactions. In the last few years, wages worth crores of rupees have been rejected by the electronic payment system because of issues related to Aadhaar and bank accounts such as mapping of incorrect bank account numbers with Aadhaar, linking of incorrect Aadhaar with job cards and so on. Most of the workers were not even aware about the reasons for delays in wage-payments or how to get the issues rectified.

Another increasingly common issue is the crediting of wages or pension to the wrong bank account linked to Aadhaar. In Aadhaar-based payments, the money is credited to the bank account that was linked last with a particular UID number. In several cases, wages are credited to accounts of workers that are hardly used by them and are different from the ones that they normally use. Often the workers are not even aware of the existence such accounts or how they were linked to their Aadhaar without their consent. In the recent past, wages worth several crores were credited to Airtel Payments bank accounts that were opened and linked with workers’ Aadhaar without their consent and knowledge.

There are many cases in which the wages or pension get credited to someone else’s account linked with the person’s Aadhaar. One of the most glaring examples is the case of 64-year-old Premani Kunwar who lived in absolute penury and died of starvation. She did not receive her old-age pension for the last two months before her death as it was credited to someone else’s account that got linked with her Aadhaar without her knowledge.

And the third issue that affects people, especially the elderly, is the failure of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication during withdrawal of pension or wages because of issues such as poor internet connectivity, failure of fingerprint authentication and so on. They often have to make multiple trips to bank or the customer service center to withdraw their money.

It must be added that the uncertainty in timely payment of wages and the hassles involved in withdrawing them are dissuading workers from working in MGNREGA.

Constructing truth for New India

The violations caused by Aadhaar are not just restricted to MGNREGA and NSAP. A large number of families of Jharkhand are regularly denied their grain entitlement in the public distribution system because of issues related to failure of Aadhaar-based biometric authentication at the ration shop, cancellation of ration cards not linked with Aadhaar and so on.

At least 14 persons have died of starvation and destitution in the last one year. All these families were denied their grain entitlements while some victims were denied pensions. Seven of these deaths happened because of issues related to Aadhaar.

It is worth mentioning that the state government, in 2017-18, claimed to have cancelled 11.64 lakh ‘fake’ and ‘duplicate’ ration cards with the help of Aadhaar. It reported savings of around 224 crores due to this move. As it turned out, the list included several genuine and alive persons who stopped receiving their grain entitlement. Eleven-year Santoshi, who died of starvation, was also denied ration as her family’s card was cancelled in the want of Aadhaar.

It is deeply worrying that while the performance in implementing DBT in MGNREGA and NSAP is being celebrated, there is negligible acknowledgement of the hardships caused by Aadhaar.

Siraj Dutta is based in Jharkhand and has been working on the MNREGA for the last six years.