GS Paper III

News Excerpt:

Recently,  an article written by a member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India focused attention on the significance of DBT in providing dignity to the poor.

What is Direct Benefit Transfer(DBT)? 

• The Government of India launched the DBT Program on 1st Jan 2013 to transfer benefits to the underprivileged population in a transparent and honest manner.
• This system has been globally recognised as a “logistical marvel” as it leverages the digital public infrastructure to its full potential.
• Schemes such as the National Child Labour Project, LPG Subsidy, Janani Suraksha Yojana etc are successful examples of DBT.
• It is estimated that DBT has resulted in savings of 1.14 per cent of India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

DBT: As a Preserver of the poor’s dignity.

• Preserving the dignity of the poor is another crucial benefit that has received little attention.
• In that way, DBT is fulfilling the mandate of Article 21 which guarantees the Right to Live with dignity.
• Even though dignity might be challenging to quantify, it should be recognized that even with efficient administration, the poor would have to undertake a long road to avail of government benefits. 
• This change in approach, where instead of the poor availing of government benefits, it’s the government benefits that reach them without an intermediary, has important implications for their psyche.
•  In a civil and humane society, it is essential to recognise that all individuals, irrespective of their economic and social circumstances, have equal rights to dignity.

How has DBT helped the poor in preserving their dignity?

• Before DBT, the poor would have to knock on the doors of the intermediary elites to receive what was rightfully theirs. They would often be turned away or would have to wait in long lines, which eroded their dignity and deprived them of respect. 
• DBT ended the poverty parade with the government reaching the poor rather than the other way around.

Need for replication of DBT in other areas such as Justice:

• We need to think hard about how we can replicate the success of DBT, which leveraged technology to efficiently deliver goods and services to the poor in other areas.
• The President of India has highlighted the plight of prisoners who have been languishing for years in jails for petty crimes because they do not have the financial or legal resources to fight their cases.
• She appealed to the judges and government to design a mechanism where justice can reach the poor, not where they have to struggle and fight for justice and still be deprived of it.

Constitutional and Statutory provisions for free legal aid to poor

Also, we can explore poverty from different perspectives:

• Dystopian View: This view relates to a hypothetical state of society where there is great suffering or injustice.
• • In the dystopian novel “The Rise of The Meritocracy”, written in the late 1950s, Michael Young argued that in a purely merit-oriented society, there will be two classes. 
  • The elite, believe that “their success is a just award for their capacity, their efforts.”
  •  The rest would be those who failed either because they did not try or lacked the capacity, thus making poverty an individual’s fault.

Given that elites were “meritorious”, they legitimately deserved to rule over the poor and the unsuccessful.

• • For these experts, poverty was a technical problem of either a lack of resources, lack of capabilities, or lack of self-regulation or discipline.
• The Tyranny of Experts by William Russell  Easterly: Individual rights perspective or its deprivation. 
  • This alternative approach was based on a fundamental premise that we must understand poverty from the individual rights perspective or its deprivation in a historical context.
  • Rather than looking for technical answers from the outside, addressing poverty might require working with the poor.
  • It provided a paternalistic solution i.e. either to provide resources to the poor or to nudge them towards the rightful corrective action to improve their well-being.

• The Rights-based approach:

• • It highlighted that the state attempts to provide basics such as food, shelter, and medical care to all its citizens.
  • In this approach, there is an implicit recognition that people can find themselves in unfortunate economic and social circumstances beyond their control. There could be circumstances when the poor tried and yet did not make it.
  • Thus, institutions must be designed from the Rawlsian perspective of justice with a veil of ignorance. The Veil of Ignorance is a way of working out the basic institutions and structures of a just society.
  •  In such a society, the burden of poverty has to be shared by all members of society, particularly the rich.

We have to be cognisant in the design of the programs that while delivering the rightful benefits to the poor, the mechanism preserves their dignity.

Mains PYQ

Q. Reforming the government delivery system through the Direct Benefit Transfer Scheme is a progressive step, but it has its limitations too. Comment. (UPSC 2022)

Q. In what way could replacement of price subsidy with direct benefit Transfer (DBT) change the scenario of subsidies in India? Discuss.   (UPSC 2015)