CASH, ON DELIVERY

India has employed its direct benefit transfer system to help people tide over the ongoing health and economic crises. Its real test will begin when the crises deepen

- SHAGUN KAPIL

WITHOUT ANY cash or work, how will I survive? That was my first thought after reaching my village,” says Ram Kewat, a 60-year-old daily wage labourer.

It’s a journey of 450 km from Delhi to his village on the outskirts of Jhansi, one of Uttar Pradesh’s southernmost districts. Kewat covered that distance on foot in just five days, walking, on average an excruciatingly tiresome 90 km a day to reach his village on March 29. After the government announced a three-week nationwide lockdown to prevent the spread of COVID-19 on March 24, Kewat knew that he would be out of work and food, and decided to walk to his village since there was no other mode of commute.

Upon reaching his village, he survived on food provided by a local non-profit for a week and was out of sorts when, on April 7, he received a message on his phone informing of a ₹2,000 deposit in his bank account under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY). “I had completely forgotten about this account that I had opened last year,” he says. “I didn’t receive any money in 2019. The money credited this year is a blessing,” he says. PMJDY was launched in 2014 to provide universal access to banking services. In 2019, when the government announced the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme—an income support scheme for farmers—Kewat registered to receive cash support of ₹6,000 a year in three instalments. He opened his PMJDY account using his Aadhaar number, and his mobile phone was also seeded to this account.