State to link its schemes for the poor with Aadhaar Tough road ahead for foreign tourists
To promote cashless transactions in the wake of demonetisation and weed out corruption, the state cabinet on Tuesday decided to transfer the amount related to all its schemes into the accounts of beneficiaries by linking it to Aadhaar.
The cabinet on Tuesday gave its nod to bring a bill to make Aadhaar number mandatory for authentication of the beneficiary.
The state gives direct benefit transfer (DBT) for various schemes including scholarship, payments of employment guarantee scheme, pension and subsidy on cooking gas. The government extends 44 benefits in kind including pipeline for cooking gas, tarpaulin for farmers, textbooks, agricultural pumps, seeds, pesticides and agriculture equipment. It has now decided to credit cash into the accounts of the beneficiary.
The state has earmarked an outlay of Rs4,322 crore for DBT of 161 schemes. The government is expecting substantial savings by plugging leakages owing to bogus beneficiaries. Around 10.96 crore people in the state have Aadhaar numbers, although the enrollment in the age groups of 0 to 5 years is negligible.
The scheme was adopted by the Central government last year. It helped in saving Rs36,500 crore. “When we decided to transfer cash instead of distributing bicycles to students, the students could buy better quality cycles. In some cases, the students purchased expensive cycles by adding their money to the fund provided by us,” said finance minister Sudhir Mungantiwar.
The minister said they will have get a system to curb misuse of the new form of benefit transfers.
“We are extending faith in consumers by handing over the cash
Foreigners and tourists coming to Mumbai are facing a tough time due to demonetisation, but are more concerned about the local citizens.
“We will be staying here only for some weeks. But it’s the citizens I am worried about who wait for hours on a daily basis,” said Bianca Patrizia Ronayne, a South African tourist waiting outside a Colaba bank. “But the country is taking such a big step, so we should not look the horse in the mouth,” she added.
The process of changing currency is more difficult for tourists, explains Ronayne. “We have to first stand in a queue to ask our bank to convert dollars or pounds into rupees, which is always the highest currencies. Then we have to stand in another line to convert those high denomination notes into new ones.” “I am in the country for over three weeks and only had notes of high denominations. had no choice but to wait for six hours the next day in a bank to exchange Rs 2,500,” said Leigh Cuen, an American tourist who has taken to austerity measures to save for her Goa trip nex weekend.
Manon Regnier, a French woman, had come down all the way for her Indian teacher’s wedding. “It was embarrassing for me to ask for money from the family.”
“I just came to India and two days later I hear people saying highest currencies are banned My next destination is Goa and heard people say one can even exchange old notes into new ones,” said 22-year-old Julius Reuter, from Germany.