‘India is yet to exploit full potential of DBT in education’

Parth J. Shah, president, Centre for Civil Society (CCS), talks about challenges in the current Direct Benefit Transfer system in education.

or she would forward the money to the student who won the scholarship. It facilitated corruption. The money that is going around is still the same, but now it directly reaches the beneficiary. In this sense, DBT has dramatically improved the efficiency of delivering cash bringing down the level of corruption. In urban areas, the situation is still better, but in rural areas, students did not even know that they got the scholarship and the principal and teacher were able to sit and use the money themselves. This has stopped. Q. Other than facilitating cash delivery, how else has DBT benefitted students and what more potential does DBT has to IMPROVE OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM? A. The current scholarship model is largely based on merit or merit-cum-means and is not attached to any conditions. As long as you have a scholarship certificate, you can continue to show it to get money. There will not be any questions about your attendance or class performance. So, the use of DBT right now is limited, but can have some goal attached to it and not just stay as a money transfer facility. One way to do is to bring in conditional cash transfers. This is the standard procedure followed in various countries across the world, where in order to continue to receive scholarship money, students have to fulfil some conditions like maintaining attendance, scores etc. These help DBT focus on particular outcomes. Scholarships do not have this kind of focus; they are general support given to students. Q. Has India started using DBT FOR MORE THAN JUST EFfiCIENT CASH TRANSFERS? A. In a first-of-its-kind programme in India, the DBT is being used to lower dropout rate in Orissa high schools. A secondary education programme called Orissa Girls’ Incentive Programme (OGIP) is being carried now wherein cash rewards are given to students for maintaining attendance. Here, the dropout rate was over 50%, but has significantly gone down. Another programme is being replicated in Rajasthan. Right now, there are several other poorer states that are interested in extending the role of DBT, but right now are trying to recognise their focus groups and establish their priority like SC youths, ST youths, SC girls etc. These are political decisions, they take time. India has not yet started to exploit the uses of DBT completely like other countries have. There is a lot that can be streamlined. Q. What are the major challengES THAT DBT FACES IN THE COUNTRY? A. The first major challenge is logistical. We do not have a banking system efficient enough that ensures smooth implementation of DBT. Beneficiaries might not even have bank accounts or the banking facilities are far from them, long queues, paper work and digital illiteracy are real roadblocks. The second challenge is that some people in the focus group might qualify, but are not identified to get the scheme benefit. A group of adivasi girls is recognised as a beneficiary of a particular scheme, but not all of them get the benefit and are left behind. Other than Orissa and Rajasthan, DBT is not being used for any other purpose than as a money transfer facility; there is hardly any initiative at spreading awareness either. Politics, too, gets in the way of DBT. There are interest groups like teachers, principals etc., who are not happy with DBT. So, these groups try to influence the policy in their favour thus defeating the cause of DBT. Despite being a major internet market, consumers in India are yet to experience high speed and reliable internet connections. They complain about poor mobile broadband speeds. Even the shift to 4G network has not solved problems faced by them.

India has moved up on the 4G LTE (fourth-generation long term evolution) availability rankings with Reliance Jio’s entry last year. Jio’s nationwide 4G launch in September made 4G services far more accessible in the country, but at the expense of lower average speeds. The problem of poor internet connectivity is not just a rural phenomenon and even pockets in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, are facing problems due to slow speed on their mobile data.

Manshi Arora, who is associated with Open Signal, a company that specialises in wireless coverage mapping, told The Sunday Guardian: “The 4G speed in the country is comparatively slower than even Sri Lanka which is shocking.”

Service providers Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and RCom (Reliance Communications) did not reply to The Sunday Guardian’s queries on poor internet speed. Also, despite repeated attempts to contact Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) chairman and secretary, the regulatory authority did not respond.

While TRAI has already set the Quality of Service (QoS) for wired broadband internet services at 512Kbps as minimum download speed, there is no QoS rules set on the download speeds that people get with their mobile data connection.

According to Netwin Infosolutions, an international internet watchdog agency, the data service package that promises 8 Mbps in the country hardly provides services at 5 Mbps (Mbps is megabits per second, a measure of internet speed) on the wired connection. The problem of speed is patchier than wired connection in the country. B.S. Rajput, a telecom expert working with the Netwin Infosolutions, told The Sunday Guardian: “Data provider companies are simply maximising data connection sales, without offering good network quality. Most of them are not investing much to improve the proper bandwidth distribution system which has impacted internet speed across the country.”