To combat corruption, the government has decided to convert all the 10 crore members of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) to the unique identification (UID) format in 18 months.
The agreement between the rural development ministry and the UID Authority of India (UIDAI) has been signed just weeks away from the kick-off of the ambitious numbering process for all residents of India.
"We hope to start the rollout in 3-4 months," said urban development minister CP Joshi, whose ministry is in charge of the most expensive welfare scheme in India's history.
With its monumental proportions, the Mahatma Gandhi NREGS has come under increasing attack from researchers for engendering corruption and diverting taxpayers' money on a massive scale.
From just Rs8,823 crore spent four years ago, the government has set apart a whopping Rs40,100 crore for the project this year, leading to worries over corruption and diversion of funds.
A recent government-sponsored study announced in May found large-scale corruption and irregularities in the project.
The study by the NOIDA-based VV Giri National Labour Institute found that in many cases, the implementation authorities were taking the money in the name of the actual beneficiaries.
"In fact, the workers were threatened to keep their mouths shut. One of them mentioned that the NREGS had proved to be a boon for the panchayat functionaries," the report said.
Other reports have pointed to long dead people drawing benefits of the scheme and the same dams being built again and again. Complaints have also pointed to discrimination by the panchayat authorities -- who implement the scheme on the ground -- in allotting work.
The feeling was echoed by Sam Pitroda, special adviser to the prime minister, in response to thesigning of the UID memorandum.
"Our system has a huge amount of leakage in it," Pitroda said. "As we begin to spend more and more money on various programmes, it is more important to look at technology to facilitate effective delivery."
The ministry aims to plug most of the loopholes by using UID verification, both at the work site as well as at the time of disbursement of money. The exact implementation, however, will be decided by the state governments, Joshi said, pointing to various examples across the country.
States like Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Bihar have already rolled out various fingerprint-based verification systems for the implementation of the scheme. For example, Bihar has issued three lakh smart cards with the impressions of all 10 fingers and the iris of the beneficiaries planted on a smart card. The smart card is used to check the identity of the beneficiary.
To prevent the problem of fictitious dams, culverts and roads being constructed by panchayat authorities, Andhra Pradesh has issued handheld devices to work coordinators who have to click a picture of the construction and upload it to the central database.
According to the memorandum, workers, all of whom must have an Aadhar number, will have to verify themselves against the UID data on a location-aware device at the work site.
To prevent the money from being misappropriated by local government officials, the benefits will be released only upon a biometric verification of the recipient. Getting a UID will also give the beneficiaries a bank account for receiving their dues.
Meanwhile, the Aadhar project is all set to start enrolment in the coming weeks, said UIDAI head Nandan Nilekani. "We have entered into agreements with 10 banks, LIC [the Life Insurance Corporation of India], all the states. All the tests have been done. All the registrars are ready to roll out," he said.
Nilekani has a target of issuing 10 crore Aadhar numbers by March 2011. He is expected to add another 60 crore Indians to the list by March 2014.
Comments