How tech innovation in DBT is enabling transparent, corruption free welfare services in India

Recently, addressing a panel discussion in Technology Sabha, Saurabh Tiwari, Joint Secretary, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Government of India, spoke about the role of technology in streamlining the DBT scheme, which has evolved over the years to bring about efficiency in delivering welfare services to the citizens.

The Government of India in 2013, started the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) scheme to streamline distribution of benefits and subsidies to eligible Indian citizens. DBT effectively leverages technology to deliver welfare services, boosts transparency, efficiency, and reduces the possibility of corruption.    

The first phase of DBT was initiated in 43 districts and later on 78 more districts were added in 27 schemes pertaining to scholarships, women, child and labour welfare. About a decade ago, DBT was further expanded across the country. Seven new scholarship schemes and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) was brought under DBT in 300 identified districts with higher Aadhaar enrolment.

“Most of the DBT schemes require some eligibility documentation therefore, the DBT approach involves using Aadhaar to obtain all available information from the Unique Identification Authority of India’s (UIDAI) Central Identities Data Repository (CIDR), which is stored in their database. This includes the ability to automatically retrieve information such as name, date of birth, address, and photograph,” said Saurabh Tiwari, Joint Secretary, Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT), Government of India.

To verify an applicant’s eligibility for programs like scholarships, supporting documentation such as income certificates and caste certificates are required. All of these certificates ought to be digitalised and linked with Aadhaar to enable central and state governments to access them with an applicant’s Aadhaar and provide welfare services in accordance with that information. This greatly facilitates both the user and the delivery process.

Addressing the security aspects linked with the Aadhaar ecosystem that ensures secured DBT transactions, Tiwari highlighted that recent innovation of UIDAI in relation to Aadhaar has been facial authentication. He also spoke about the challenges that existed prior to biometric authentication because there were lacking in the device ecosystem, for example iris scanning was expensive and taking fingerprints manually was difficult. With over 100 crore smartphones in the country and a rapidly growing ecosystem, face authentication is now less challenging on both Android and iOS smartphones. 

Tiwari pointed out that blockchain technology can be used to validate data, have trustworthy backends, both of which are crucial as far as the service delivery is concerned.

Future of DBT

With regards to the future, a number of state governments have already begun constructing databases for social registries. These social registries have developed a new model wherein instead of someone having to apply for a welfare benefit, a database suo moto finds out eligible beneficiaries by using important emerging technologies for the particular scheme. Later, suo moto reaches out to them, conducts a basic level of due diligence, and delivers the benefit. Since, states like Karnataka and Haryana are leading, and other northeastern states like Assam are following up, this is likely to be the direction of DBT in future.

Tiwari stated that there are two important aspects of DBT – first is an excellent citizen experience, with services available to citizens around the clock. Secondly, there is end to end digitisation of systems in DBT, there are no middle men involved and hence, corruption is curbed to the least possible degree. 

Conclusion

The DBT system, using emerging technologies, gives welfare service access to citizens even at the grassroots level. DBT streamlines access to essential services to the beneficiaries while eliminating leakages and intermediaries out of the system, and also sets a benchmark for future welfare programs in India. The end goal is to ensure there is maximum governance and minimum government.