World Bank to give $1bn aid for India’s social relief efforts

Focus will be on making social benefits accessible across country, says bank

NEW DELHI: The World Bank on Friday announced a US$1-billion “Accelerating India’s COVID-19 Social Protection Response Programme”, aimed at integrating India’s 400-plus fragmented social-security programmes for migrant workers hit by the outbreak, part of an initiative that seeks to rebalance access to safety nets between rural and urban India.

The programme will especially focus on making social benefits such as subsidised food under the National Food Security Act, cash transfers and pensions portable so that beneficiaries can access them from anywhere in the country, not just from their home districts, the bank said. Portability simply refers to a digitised, universal and always-on platform, which ensures benefits move along with the migrants.

“The choice is being said to be between lives and livelihoods. This is not a choice the government of India is making,” Junaid Ahmad, country director of the bank said.

NEWDELHI: The World Bank on Friday announced a US$1-billion “Accelerating India’s COVID-19 Social Protection Response Programme”, aimed at integrating India’s 400-plus fragmented social-security programmes for migrant workers hit by the outbreak, part of an initiative that seeks to rebalance access to safety nets between rural and urban India.

The programme will especially focus on making social benefits such as subsidised food under the National Food Security Act, cash transfers and pensions portable so that beneficiaries can access them from anywhere in the country, not just from their home districts, the bank said.

Portability simply refers to a digitised, universal and always-on platform, which ensures benefits move along with the migrants.

Junaid Ahmad, country director of the bank said this is a “watershed moment” in social security of the country because the government has, for the first time, opened up an “important window” in the form of the state disaster response fund, which is now linked to social safety.

The Union government, in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, allowed states to use the fund freely without usual approvals to provide social protection.

A national lockdown that took effect from March 25 shuttered shops, factories and construction sites, pushing millions of migrant workers out of jobs.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced free food assistance to 80 million migrant workers worth Rs 3500 core, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Rs 20 lakh crore (Rs 20 trillion) economic package to pull the economy out of a slump.

The first phase of the World Bank operation will be implemented countrywide through the

Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY). It will immediately help scale up cash transfers and food benefits, using a core set of pre-existing national platforms and programmes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT), the bank said.

Jobless migrant workers, hit by the lockdown, have fallen through the cracks because static social safety nets did not reach them in absence of portability.

“If World Bank wants to streamline our social safety nets, first off, they are getting into very complicated things. Issue sometimes is not so much about how to reach the people as it is about how to get two wings of government talking,” said economist Abhijit Sen, former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission.

The arguments are on two things, Sen said: “One, don’t overcentralise things. Where World Bank can intervene and should, is portability. Two, if I had to give out a billion dollars, then, I would give very little of that to federal govt and most of it to states; in fact, more to municipalities.”

Over 90% of India’s workforce is employed in the informal sector, without access to basic savings or pensions, or paid leave from work. “There are large transfers to the rural poor. Look at the PMGKY. The idea is to make social benefits such as food and cash transfers just as easily accessible for urban informal workers and migrants,” said World Bank lead of the project, Shrayana Bhattacharya.

› Clearly, everybody recognises the shock (from Covid). The choice is being said to be between lives and livelihoods. This is not a choice the govt of India is making. JUNAID AHMAD, India director, World Bank