When Leela, a resident of Hiran Magri in Udaipur district (Rajasthan), was in the seventh month of her pregnancy in December last year, she first heard of the direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme. The accredited social health activist (ASHA) worker in her locality told her that she would need to open a bank account if she wanted Rs 1,000 due to her under the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a scheme under which a pregnant woman is given a cash incentive if she delivered the child in a government hospital.

“Now instead of the cheque, money would be deposited directly into your account,” the ASHA had told her.

Leela had wondered what good would come of an account of her own. After all, it was her husband Tarachand who took care of everything. After her first childbirth Tarachand had encashed the cheque and spent it as he willed.    

But today, a day after she delivered a baby boy at the city’s government hospital, her account has been credited with Rs 1,000, and she feels good about it. “I will spend it on my baby,” she says, looking at Tarachand, who nods dutifully.

While the husband might still end up spending the money, he will have to ask his wife for it, and Leela knows it. The confidence the ownership of an account has given Leela is apparent.  

Leela’s bank account was opened under the DBT scheme rolled out in 20 districts across the country on January 1.

The scheme entails direct cash transfer of subsidies to the bank accounts of the beneficiaries. Udaipur is one of the three districts—Ajmer and Alwar are the other two—in Rajasthan that rolled out DBT.  

“Although the central government has identified 34 schemes, we have been able to roll out eight schemes only, and are in the process of extending it to three more. The total number of beneficiaries at present is 16,000,” said Vikas Bhale, the district collector of Udaipur.

Out of eight schemes for which the DBT has been rolled out, seven are scholarship and stipend schemes for students while the other one is for JSY.

While Leela got an account opened when she heard of the DBT scheme, Kamla, admitted in the same hospital, did not. Puja, Shilpa and Radha, three other women in the same labour room, too, did not know about DBT, and therefore did not have a bank account.

But they need not worry. They will not lose out on the benefit. Women like Kamla and others who did not open bank accounts will be given account payee cheques with three months’ time to cash them. “They need to open a bank account in three months,” says principal medical officer, Dr Mahesh Bhatnagar.

Explaining benefits of the new scheme, Dr Bhatnagar said the department earlier provided the women with bearer cheques that could be encashed by anyone at the bank. This meant any of her relatives, including her husband, could withdraw the money and spend it on things other than the child or the mother. “But since the money is to be deposited in the mother’s account now, no one can withdraw it except the woman concerned,” he said.  

It also eliminates the scope of commission, Dr Bhatnagar explained.

Earlier, the official responsible for delivering the cheque to the women could ask for a commission. “We have had cases in which the cheques were given to the relative only when they gave a bribe of Rs 200. In some cases even the doctors in charge of the hospitals were found to be involved,” Dr Bhatnagar said. The new system forecloses such a possibility.   

All the new bank accounts that are being opened are linked to the Aadhaar (UID) number in order to avoid duplication. The existing bank account holders have been asked to get their Aadhaar numbers and link them to their accounts. In case of JSY, out of the total 2,526 beneficiaries, 2,024 have bank accounts, and 1,567 have their accounts linked with the Aadhaar number.  

The other seven schemes that have been rolled out under the DBT also operate in a similar fashion. “These seven schemes are scholarship schemes and like the JSY, the scholarship money is directly credited into the bank accounts of the students—the beneficiaries,” district collector Vikas Bhale said.

While the scheme was officially on its leg from January 1 this year, it actually came in to effect a month later—that is, from February 1.

A lot of groundwork had to be done before it came into effect, said SC Sukleja, head of the DBT cell that has been formed to coordinate with all the departments that come under the purview of DBT and also monitor the scheme.

The departments involved in the DBT so far—education, health and minority affairs—had to prepare the list of beneficiaries and check whether they had bank accounts and Aadhaar numbers. If they did not, they were asked to get both as early as possible.

“The process of getting bank accounts (opened) and Aadhaar enrolment was started in December last year and is still on,” said Sukleja.

Following the preparation of the list of beneficiaries, officials of these three departments had to be trained to operate the software prepare for the rollout. Called central plan scheme monitoring system (CPSMS) and created under the aegis of the finance ministry, the software is the backbone of the DBT scheme. A similar exercise to train officers of all the other departments is underway to ensure that all the 33 schemes are brought under DBT soonest.

In the department, there is a ‘maker’ who feeds in the data and a ‘checker’ who approves them. For example, under JSY, a computer operator at the government hospital in Udaipur feeds in the data of every delivery at the hospital—the mother’s name, her bank account details and the Aadhaar number. This data is then approved by the ‘maker’, the chief medical officer of the hospital.

Following the approval, the data is sent to the bank that operates the account of the health department for JSY (also called the sponsor bank). The bank then, on intimation of the hospital, transfers the money into the beneficiary’s bank account.

The entire process, from delivery of a child to the transfer of JSY money to the mother’s account, should not take more than one day. At present, however, the department is facing a plethora of teething problems causing delays in the transfer of the money. 

Most of the problems, said Gajendra Kumar, the ‘maker’ at the government hospital in Udaipur, are at the banks’ end. “Many of the banks do not recognise the IFSC code so transferring JSY money to their accounts becomes difficult.”

This has led to delays in transfer of money to beneficiaries. The State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ) is the sponsor bank for the JSY scheme and DBT disbursements will go into 1567 beneficiary accounts spread across 28 banks.

But teething troubles are aplenty and only a miniscule number of transfers have actually happened. Owing to snags in the software and the banks’ lack of preparedness, there has been a pile-up of cases of delay in cash transfer. Twenty days into the launch of the scheme on February 20, the hospital has been able to process only 12 cases successfully.

“Yes there are glitches in the system,” admitted Dr RN Bairwa, chief medical and health officer (CMHO) and head of the district’s health department. “But it’s only been a few days since we started this new system. We will soon start operating smoothly.”  

Explaining why banks face a problem in recognising the IFSC code, BL Meena of SBBJ, manager of the sponsor bank and the person designated to coordinate with all banks on the DBT scheme, said it was due to different softwares used by different banks. “Each bank uses a different software and different code, and therein lies the problem. But I can assure you by March we will sort it out,” he said.    

Asked how the future of DBT looks in the district and the challenges he would face in its rollout, the district collector Bhale says it is too early to say anything. “We have just rolled it out for eight schemes and have not faced any insurmountable difficulty, leaving aside minor technical glitches. The actual challenge would be to extend it to other major schemes,” says Bhale.

 Nobody thinks that a full roll out of DBT to cover all the 33 schemes is going to be easy. But the first glimpses of what DBT can do to reduce cost of public services, fight corruption and empower the poor, particularly women, are evident on the ground in Udaipur.