Why a bank should pull its metal gates so close that customers can only enter sideways, a shoulder at a time, becomes apparent as soon as I reach the first floor of the Bank of India branch in Nagri town of Jharkand, just 15 kilometres outside the capital city of Ranchi. Over 40 perplexed villagers fill the long room in a veering diagonal that forks between the cash counter and another clerk’s desk. As one bank officer puts it, “It’s as if 2016’s demonetisation is back in February 2018.”
But these are different marching orders: an experimental innovation in the public distribution system (PDS). The villagers hold several hopeful identity documents — bank passbooks, Aadhaar cards, yellow and pink ration cards — that have to be in perfect bureaucratic harmony before their family can get its monthly supply of rice.
On the morning of February 27, the first step of the innovation seems to be holding the bank hostage. At one end of the forked line, a harried clerk peers accusingly into a printer that has been taken apart, undoubtedly, in no small measure of frustration. When she looks up, about 20 people stare back at her with large, lost eyes. “The printer is not working, come tomorrow,” she finally says in Hindi. An immediate volley of “Please, madam,” hits her, but she continues to fume at the dusty machine.
At the cash counter, her colleague waves a withdrawal slip for ₹1,106: “People who want small change, please come tomorrow.” A groan rumbles through the room, shoulders drop. People have walked for hours or spent precious money on auto rides to the bank. After standing around waiting for a miraculous change in affairs, the villagers begin to reluctantly disperse.
“Come tomorrow, come tomorrow,” mumbles 41-year-old Jamna Sanga as she slides out of the narrow opening in the gate grille, shoulder by shoulder. Jamna is a thin woman, her cheekbones sharp cliffs on a lean face, but in her constant anxiety about rations, she seems hungrier still. “This month too, I’ll waste a whole week chasing rice. It is humiliating.”
Nagri Block of Ranchi district, comprising 12,500 poor and largely Adivasi families, is the site of a pilot project of the Direct Benefit Transfer or DBT for food subsidy. Launched by the Jharkhand State government in early October 2017, the experiment transfers the food subsidy to beneficiaries through their bank accounts every month, which they can use to buy rice. Earlier, Jamna would take her ‘yellow’ ration card — for poor Antyodaya households — and buy her entitlement of 35 kg of rice for a rupee each. “I would take ₹35, and an able-bodied brother, and would have the rice in my house in a few hours, maybe half a day if there was a long queue.”
Bank and forth
Since October, under DBT, the food supplies department has been transferring ₹1,106 (calculated at ₹31.60 per kg, the effective subsidy per kg per family) to her household’s Aadhaar-linked bank account. Jamna must withdraw this amount from the bank, add her rupee per kg to it, and then go to the ration shop to collect her 35 kg of rice for ₹32.60 per kg, paying a total of ₹1,141.
Chief Minister Raghubar Das has claimed that DBT reduces corruption and inefficiency in the public distribution system, and has often referred to it as “a success”. An independent evaluation is due this month, but he has already made clear that he wants to replicate it across the State. The people of Nagri, though, believe this would be a disaster.
Piling into a share-auto along with others returning empty-handed from the bank to Chete village, Jamna says, “This is the third time I’m coming to the bank — twice to check whether the money has been transferred, and now to withdraw. It’s like a contest, where you jump this hurdle, then that hurdle, and keep at it until only the grittiest wins.” People like her 82-year-old mother who lives alone in a different village, says Jamna, are often “the ones trailing” in the back.
When I visit four random villages in Nagri, and ask if the new system works, each time, a group gathers to describe wasted hours at the bank, missed work days and mounting expenses as they chase their monthly quota of rice. In Chete village, 35-year-old Durgan Pahan says that he didn’t receive the promised SMS telling him when and to which account the money was credited. “So, I went from bank to bank every few days for the first two months.”
In Upardaha village, 14-year-old Soni Kachhap says she misses school every month to collect the subsidy, which happens to be credited inexplicably to her bank account, instead of her mother’s. In Halhoo village, mounting a cycle to rush to a construction site where he is a welder, Bergao Oraen says his subsidy has been credited to a different bank account every month, and in January, it never came.
Budhni Oraen was paid in November and January, but not in December, so she bought rice from the market at ₹19 per kg. “I have three grandchildren to feed, and I can’t afford to pay ₹32 a kg without subsidy,” the 65-year-old says. Her 78-year-old neighbour Binayak Munda gave up on his rations last November. “I can’t run marathons at this age,” he says. It is Budhni who gives him lunch these days.
Asghar Ansari, a fair price rice dealer in Vandheya, shows me his records — of 343 cardholders, over 200 have not collected January’s rations. “Every month, fewer and fewer people are coming to collect rations. I wonder, is this what the government actually wants?”
Will the CM listen?
At the end of January 2018, student volunteers from the Right to Food Campaign who conducted a survey in 13 randomly-selected villages of Nagri Block found that of the four instalments of ration due to them since DBT was put in place, on average, people had received only 2.1 instalments. The entire process had taken the respondents an average of 12 hours spread over several days. Nearly 97% of the beneficiaries wanted DBT to be withdrawn, and the old system of paying a rupee per kilo to be reinstated.
On February 26, thousands walked eight kilometres in protest, from a junction near Nagri to the Governor’s house in Ranchi city — they were stopped before they reached the Chief Minister’s house. The overwhelming number of women in the procession chanted, “ DBT hatao, ration bachao (Remove DBT, save ration).” They held posters saying ‘ Bachche school bhejenge, bank nahin (We’ll send the kids to school, not to the bank) . ’
The rally was organised under the banner of the Ration Bachao Manch, a coalition of five opposition parties — Congress, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, Communist Party of India (Marxist), Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and Jharkhand Vikas Morcha — and 10 civil society groups, including the All India People’s Forum and Right to Food Campaign.
Last month, thousands walked in protest against the DBT scheme, in Ranchi city.
Bhugni Sanga, who has brought her five-month-old in a shoulder sling, says it is a matter of her son’s future. “He’s as old as the DBT scheme, and he’s spent far too much of his short life with me in banks!”
Farmer Esther Toppo from Lohio village says the older system wasn’t perfect, but she received the rice quickly, leaving her with the energy to focus on things other than food and survival. “When a kg of rice was ₹1, everyone understood it. Why make one rupee ₹32.60 minus ₹31.60 and ruin everyone’s peace?” A few hundred metres ahead, to beat the heat of noon, Mangri Devi has spun a turban out of the banner filled with signatures and thumbprints from her village of Dulalong, demanding the undoing of DBT. She knows the Central government hopes to promote the system across India, as an Aadhaar-enabled cashless scheme.
“Nagri was put through so much trouble to see if the DBT experiment works. Chalo , I consider it public service. If the Chief Minister listens to our terrible experience with DBT, and scraps it, he can protect the rest of the State, and maybe, even the country from it.”
***
When I meet Jamna at Chete village a day before the protest march, she tells me she wants to go too, but it’s on a Monday — she has to go to the bank. She leans back on the mud house she has built with her husband, a daily-wage labourer. “An Adivasi family like mine doesn’t need much to be happy, but we do need to eat,” she says.
We watch her 12-year-old daughter skip about with a couple of goat kids. “How fast they grow,” Jamna says. “And how much they need to eat!” To enliven the rice and watery dal her family ate that morning, Jamna has sautéed some spring onions she grew. The day’s meal done, she is already worrying about the next. “If I shake the gunny bag vigorously, there will be enough rice for two more days,” she says.
Jamna has actually received her subsidy in the same bank account, and managed to collect rations for three months from October. Hers is the best-case scenario — but even she has paid a huge price.
Each month, Jamna pays ₹32 each for four autorickshaw rides to and from Nagri 14 kilometres away, and a transaction fee of ₹20 twice at the Pragya Kendra or banking correspondent to check if the money has been deposited. In the six days it took her to get the rations in December, she could not tend to her pregnant goat that was bleating in pain, missed five days of work at a hotel that pays her ₹150 a day to wash the dishes, and had to buy firewood because she didn’t find the time to forage in the jungle.
On the days her husband goes to the bank, they lose ₹400 in daily wages. Most painfully, for Jamna, when she leaves for the bank before 8 a.m. to update her passbook and withdraw the money, her daughter misses school to collect water for the household.
Once Jamna has her ₹1,106, she waits a few days for a brother with a motorcycle to be available to go to the ration dealer’s shop in Vandheya, 10 kilometres away. In December, the point-of-sale machine did not accept her biometrics one day — “ Computer anghoota load nahin le raha tha ” — and on another, the network was unreliable. On the day she heard the machine was working, she rushed with several neighbours in a hired autorickshaw — this again, cost ₹20. The queue snaked all along the road.
In all, a kilo of rice was not ₹1 anymore. It was costlier than it ever was for the poorest in Nagri. When Jamna finally received the rice, it was four kilos less than her allotment. “After all these changes, the dealer’s cut is the one thing that has remained unchanged,” she laughs.
***
The National Food Security Act, 2013, mandates that Central and State governments provide adequate amounts of quality food at affordable prices for lower income households. In January 2015, the Shanta Kumar High Level Committee on restructuring of Food Corporation of India recommended the gradual introduction of cash transfers in lieu of foodgrains provided through PDS. DBT is one of the first steps in this direction, adopting the JAM (Jan-Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile) framework.
Oddly enough, this cashless scheme has seen more cash being handled than the previous system. From having to withdraw ₹1,106 from banks, to paying for rice, to the dealers having to deposit lakhs to their own accounts to be able to claim commissions, there is a mind-boggling amount of cash movement to effectively provide rice at a rupee. As 24-year-old Babloo Thirki from Upardaha village puts it, “It’s like the government has removed the silencer from the motorbike to show off how cool its engine is, but now the bike is making noise and belching smoke — it won’t run for long.”
Schoolgirl Soni Kachhap on her way to collect the month’s subsidy.
Kuldeep Kumar, Nagri’s Block Development Officer, admits that a cashless economy does seem hard to achieve in a poor, rural area like Nagri. “But how long can we wait? Just like people learn to use the mobile phone before they learn to use the laptop, they will eventually come around to DBT.” Soon, he says, there will be no cash. “Soon, the money will be transferred directly from the government to the card holder and then, from the card holder to the ration dealer without any withdrawals in between.”
A senior official in Ranchi’s District Supply Office tells me his data shows that 87% of ration has been collected (he refuses to show me a copy or cite the source of the information, though). “If people were rejecting DBT, or if it was so hard to get the rice, then the ration would not be collected. The administration can only take decisions based on data, and the data shows it’s a success.”
The official fails to mention the warnings his department has been sending to the beneficiaries through the dealers. The half-page Hindi circulars, sometimes printed, sometimes written by hand and photocopied, are handed to cardholders who have not collected their rations for two consecutive months, whatever the reasons. “If you do not collect your cash subsidy and claim your monthly ration, you will have to face the consequences,” it says.
At one of Nagri’s Pragya Kendras, a worried elderly man stands with such a circular in his hand. “I don’t know which account the money is coming to — I don’t see it in any of the ones I know, how will I collect the ration,” he asks. The Kendra helper looks in his database and finds that the money has been transferred to a bank account the old man does not recognise. “Just buy the ration with your money, dada , before they cancel your ration card,” he advises. Initially intended, perhaps, to ensure that the food subsidy is not diverted for other purposes, the circular has become a tool to enforce the success of DBT in Nagri.
“The government may say that only a small percentage of people is not collecting the ration, but this is usually the elderly, the disabled, the ailing and the most vulnerable — the very people PDS should serve,” says economist and Right to Food campaigner Jean Drèze.
Here to stay
On February 28, two days after the protest rally, Jharkhand’s food minister Saryu Rai and food secretary Amitabh Kaushal met Drèze and three others from the Right to Food campaign to discuss the concerns around DBT. According to a press note issued by the campaign, Rai did not deny the authenticity of the survey that found people unhappy with DBT. “However, the delegation failed to persuade the Minister that the DBT experiment should be discontinued to avoid further damage,” the release says.
DBT has been attempted in at least four other places since 2015, in different versions in some places. There, too, the same upheavals of wasted time, lost wages, confounding bank visits and uncollected rations have been slotted as “implementation challenges”.
A Government of India-commissioned process monitoring study by J-PAL of the DBT for food in the three Union Territories of Chandigarh, Puducherry, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli accepts that the system would work perfectly if people had ATM cards; if they received SMS about subsidy transfers; if financial literacy was better; if it were clearer why despite low failure rates in money transfer, there was high non-receipt of funds; if dietary diversity was improved; if delivery corruption was eliminated; and if there were grievance redressal mechanisms. Until such a world exists on the ground, to “de-risk” the most vulnerable and needy, it recommends that the government provide beneficiaries a choice between social assistance in cash and kind, before taking away in-kind entitlements completely.
In other words, create a system tailored for the people it’s meant to work for. It’s what Jamna — who does not read or write English, but knows the word ‘direct’ — means when she asks, “What is so direct about a new system that has so many more steps, and so much expense and unpredictability? Who is it direct for?”
The writer is a journalist and the author of The Seasons of Trouble: Life Amid the Ruins of Sri Lanka’s Civil War .
