Economic Survey 2019: Aadhaar-linked payments checked leakages

Citing Awadh Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula’s flawed “food-for-work” programme for famine-stricken people, the Economic Survey 2018-19 has criticised the execution of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Generation Scheme (MGNREGS) under previous governments and described how things improved after Aadhaar-linked payments (ALP), tied with Jan-Dhan accounts, were introduced in 2015.

Under Asaf-ud-Daula’s “food-for-work” programme, started in 1784 in Lucknow, one set of workers was employed during daytime to construct the Imambara while another lot was hired at night to demolish what had been built.

Chief Economic Advisor (CEA) Krishnamurthy Subramanian has given a chapter in the Economic Survey — his first — to highlight how direct benefit transfer (DBT) in the MGNREGS has improved wage payment, raised the number of muster rolls filed, increased the demand for and supply of work, and reduced distress among vulnerable sections such as women, differently-abled people, and scheduled castes and scheduled tribes.