Came across advance version (11th October 2019, Distr: General in 74th session item 72(b) of the provisional agenda on Promotion and Protection of human rights reflecting questions, alternate approaches. This article I am sending on the note by Secretary General report of Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights by Philip Alston (HRC resolution 35/19). “As humankind moves, perhaps inexorably, towards the digital welfare future it needs to alter course significantly and rapidly to avoid stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare dystopia,” the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston expressing concerns on ‘digital welfare state’.
My response is to the arguments put forward in the report. The grave risk of stumbling zombie-like into digital welfare dystopia has been argued to operate in almost human rights freezone. It does trigger a debate but then it is important not to shadow the advantages that digitization has brought in for ensuring handling extreme poverty in terms of SDG principle of ‘no one is left behind’ and also ensuring efficiency in access to the poor. I had worked directly with National Human Rights Commission , India and at international level was instrumental in ensuring to get a seat for NHRCs at the UN Council of —–. I have also worked in developing digital solutions for ensuring social protection.
My work has been published by IPR, University of Batch (link attached) that gives empirical evidence as to how SAMAGRA a household wise verified data base made by the government owned software body NIC (National Informatics Commission) ensuring complete ownership and protection of data enables to have a paradigm shift from welfare approach to that of entitlement and also how it is ensured that software enables to identify the beneficiary households and target the benefits. It also enables to break silos and shift to holistic approach. UNHRC is to target good practices of digitization across the globe to developed, developing and developed economies to ensure the commitments made in SDG. This will accelerate gaining access and ensuring dignity to poor in deciding their future by using their entitlements.
The Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights by Philp Alston observations does point out the possible fear of resorting to digitization, but it is important to realize that there is always a ‘person behind the machine’. While agreeing to the observation the private sector is taking a leading role in designing, constructing, and even operating significant parts of the digital welfare state the experience is that the technology is to be used as a tool, the software and data base to be made by a Government body like NIC in India and not by private sector. This ensures update of data by Government authorised agencies like local self government and privacy and security of data is ensured. The common household data base (SAMAGRA) ensures no repeat in data collection, making silo of data base, and updation. Thus only authorized agencies do the same. The data enables to throw up list of those entailed so that no one is left behind enabling to know the entire universe of particular desired objective. Thus, duplication fraud, and non access is taken care of .
The human right of access to entitlement is equally important. Technology as presented should not be just for better skilling, but correct targeting and access is equally important. The biggest advantage of shifting of a country to a common household data base with names of individuals is the panacea as holistic approach can only then be adopted. It is flagged that the fear digital approach process is commonly referred to as ‘digital transformation’, but this somewhat neutral term should not be permitted to conceal the revolutionary, politically-driven, character of many such innovations. and remove discretion from human decision-makers. Discretion norms are set by human, thus it is not that human element is lost but then what is important that the discretion to select beneficiary is not there, entire list of those who fulfil eligibility is there and thus no one is left out. The SDG highlight that ‘no one is left behind’ is recognition of the fact that those who deserve most gets left behind as they have no access and the benifits get cornered by few. Thus, the poorest of poor has always been left out of the scheme of things. The right way of digitization and holistic approach enable to break that ceiling. The argument, that neoliberal economic policies are seamlessly blended into what are presented as cutting edge welfare reforms, which in turn are often facilitated, justified, and shielded by new digital technologies. Although the latter are presented as being ‘scientific’ and neutral, they can reflect values and assumptions that are far removed from, and may be antithetical to, the principles of human rights.
Digitization captures the entire universe and thus there is no question of anyone missing in the data base. In fact it enables micro targeting in terms of household and its members and enables better strategizing. As far as human right is concerned being left behind is the biggest violation of human right by perpetuating non access and poverty to them. The special rapporteur has admitted in the report that many get left behind and also that the welfare community has tended to see the technological dimensions as separate from the policy developments, rather than as being integrally linked. What is important and demonstrated by SAMAGRA is the policy makers make better informed decisions and also able to target for sustainable outcomes. Here I would like to mention little about SAMAGRA, the detailed link is also mentioned for those who would like to read more about the same. Abstract If it is ‘to leave nobody behind’ in pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 (SDGs), then a state requires a comprehensive and continuously updated database of individuals and households within its jurisdiction. Consolidation of this data can also assist in overcoming silo-based fragmentation in government delivery of anti-poverty programmes and services. We explore the feasibility of establishing such a database through an extended case study of Samagra (meaning ‘all comprehensive’) in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. Samagra was developed to facilitate integrated monitoring and management of all major government-topeople (G2P) cash transfers in the state, and (more radically) to support a paradigm shift from a demand-led to an entitlement-based approach to benefit delivery. Samagra is a unified population monitoring system based on continuous recording of household level demographic events, linked both to operational records of participation in diverse G2P programmes and to financial accounts provided by designated financial institutions operating within a five-kilometre radius of each household. The paper offers a practitioner’s account of Samagra’s introduction, including implementation challenges, policy outcomes and issues meriting further research and discussion. ‘Leave nobody behind’ is a cross-cutting theme of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) 2030 agenda, based on the concept of progressive universalism that prioritises and accelerates actions for the poorest and most marginalised, seeking to achieve social justice through equality of access to opportunities and highquality services for all (Bhatkal et al., 2015; Stuart and Samman, 2017; United Nations, 2015).It also resonates with the global expansion in the scale and diversity of direct benefit transfers (DBTs) as a policy instrument to advance social protection in many developing economies (Lazzolino, 2018), with recent evidence indicating a positive correlation between DBTs and some indicators of economic and physical wellbeing(Hagen-Zanker et al., 2016).
However, the proliferation of benefit transfer programmes and schemes with overlapping, fragmented and ‘silo-based’ delivery is also a potential source of unfairness and inefficiency, resulting in some households receiving multiple benefits while others receive none (Agranoff, 2005; Morse, 2013; Stewart, 2014; Uusikylä, 2013; Wegrich, 2019).To avoid such problems, it seems almost self-evident that public sector bodies need permeable organisational boundaries(Clegg, 1990, in Agranoff, 2005, p20 ; Hazy et al., 2011)and collaborative, integrated strategies and systems to consolidate and share the poverty status and eligibility of individuals and households across different programmes. A key issue in the effectiveness of such a system is the ability of the state to establish the identity of all its citizens, this in itself being an indicator of the capacity of different countries to leave nobody behind (Anderson, 2015; Carr-Hill, 2017; DI, 2016). But the establishment of a universal system for individual citizen identity (such as Aadhaar in India) is only one step towards building a comprehensive poverty monitoring system, since it does not address how transfers and their effects are affected by household composition. Whether anti-poverty transfers are allocated using universal categories, income or proxy indicators of poverty, some reckoning is required with how multiple interventions interact with each other and with resource allocation at the family and household level. The system for identification of those eligible for support must also be combined with a mechanism for transferring financial benefits to them, hence the need for financial inclusion (Alexandre, 2011; Barua et al., 2016; Radcliffe and Voorhies, 2012). Addressing these issues entails contending with the capability of the state to deliver consistent and joined-up services across vast populations, or how to go about enhancing such capability(Andrews et al., 2017). Given the widely observed limitations of attempts to replicate models successful in one context in another, it is particularly interesting and important to document endogenous or home-grown examples of successful state capability enhancement. To this end, this paper aims to document and to stimulate wider discussion of the case of Samagra in Madhya Pradesh, India from its establishment in 2012. Section 2 sets Samagra in historical and geographical context and highlights the problems that it sought to address. Section 3describes its purpose, design characteristics, scope and growth. Section 4 considers how far it has been successful in addressing problems of fragmentation, poor targeting and inefficiency, and reviews the main factors driving and impeding its establishment. Section 5 concludes with a discussion of key findings, policy implications, unanswered questions and scope for further research. This article draws heavily on the first-hand experience of the lead author as a policy actor in the state government of Madhya Pradesh at the heart of the process of setting up Samagra. It also draws heavily on officially commissioned studies of Samagra(Bhatnagar and Gupta, 2013; Menon et al., 2018; PWC, 2016). While recognising that our perspective may throw a relatively positive light on Samagra, our hope is that it will also widen and deepen discussion of it as a case study. Madhya Pradesh (MP) is the second largest state in India, by area, with approximately 72.6 million residents (Census, 2011) residing in villages and working in agriculture (Bhatnagar and Gupta, 2013, p3). Despite its size, the state has the third lowest gross domestic product (ibid) in the country, the fourth lowest human development index (0.594) (Radboud, 2017), and the highest population of scheduled tribes of any Indian state, constituting 21.1% of the population (MoTA, 2011). Social protection (SP) is the largest state sector in MP, in terms of number of beneficiaries, institutions, human resources and geographical reach (PWC, 2016). The government is committed to improving its quality and reach, including among people living below the official poverty line, the elderly, unmarried/dependent women, widows, and labourers. To this end, it has over 200 SP schemes, with an estimated budget of Rs.5,000 crore (£560,101,475) (ibid).
The Indian SP governance system has traditionally been predicated on a demand-driven, welfarebased policy framework, providing the basic needs of survival at subsistence level in areas such as health, nutrition, sanitation, livelihoods and education. Critics suggest that while reducing poverty in absolute terms this system is not sustainable, leads to aid dependency, and results in the most vulnerable being left out and at risk of falling back into poverty when impacted by shocks and trauma (Barrientos, 2005; Devereux and Sabates-Wheeler, 2004; Kabeer, 2010; Sabates. Wheeler, 2013). The many different SP schemes have had different rules, administrative processes and delivery points, leaving many eligible beneficiaries struggling to understand their entitlement. Enrolment has been further reduced by complicated and uncertain application procedures for each scheme, including lengthy processes for establishing identity and eligibility through the submission of documents relating to caste, labour category, below poverty level (BPL) status, disability, marital status or spousal death. Long delays arise while the entitlement is confirmed and the payments are processed by cash or cheque. For example, a student would need to understand the rules and eligibility criteria for thirty different scholarship schemes run by different government departments, identify those that he/she is entitled to apply for, obtain the necessary paperwork and attend the correct office to verify his/ her documentation. These problems are experienced most acutely by the vulnerable and underprivileged, who are least able to navigate the procedural complexities, and afford the time and cost arising from repeated visits to government offices. The result is that those in the direst need have often been left behind, while the wealthier, fitter and more educated take more of the benefits on offer. The potential for a rightsbased SP agenda to contribute to more holistic development has been officially recognised since Independence in 1947, as well as adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 (UN, 1948), and echoes a vast literature (e.g. Abdulai et al., 2019; Breitkreuz et al., 2017; Esquivel, 2017; SabatesWheeler et al., 2019).An important milestone towards a rights-based approach to SP in Madhya Pradesh was the passing of Resolution 37 in the Legislative Assembly in 2010 (Menon et al., 2018). This led to a detailed review of the current SP provision, and of the many constraints limiting its effectiveness.
This included data deprivation, undermining the government’s ability to understand the socioeconomic status of the state’s inhabitants. Government departments worked in silos, collecting, processing and storing data independently. Information management constraints, lack of political commitment, and high cost implications related to the potential integration and reconciliation of beneficiary information had resulted in isolated islands of data. The data that did exist related only to the beneficiaries of each scheme; there were no data on the remaining population or their entitlement and beneficiaries were often recorded only by number, not name.
Thus, while the expenditure was booked, there was seldom proof of the actual financial benefit transfer being received. For planning purposes, this led to statistical misrepresentation, skewed estimates of the population’s socioeconomic profile and poorly informed poverty alleviation strategies. A lack of coordination between government departments also resulted in overlapping benefit eligibility criteria, with no standardisation of rates or rules, and multiple agencies providing similar benefits. At the same time, due to the manual and decentralised nature of welfare implementation, each scheme had a different application form, service delivery point and process for sanction and disbursal of the benefit, often requiring attendance at more than one government office for each benefit and repeated verification of personal details and eligibility. This led to unnecessary confusion and beneficiaries either not receiving their full entitlement or, conversely, collecting duplicate benefits from multiple departments. An example of this relates to life insurance schemes provided by a number of government agencies for low income workers. As the majority of informal, lowpaid workers profess a multiplicity of occupations due to seasonal and livelihood factors, a single worker may be on the benefit list for a number of different departments, e.g. female construction workers may be listed under both the Department of Women and Child Development and the Building and Other Construction Workers Board of Labour Department. As such, government research discovered that the life insurance premium for each worker could be paid by up to five different departments. If a claim arose, due to the death of the worker, the family member would still only be eligible to claim against one of the five policies and often, due to a lack of knowledge and literacy, no claim was made by the successor of the insured as they had no awareness of the insurance cover in the first place. This meant large sums of money were being paid by the government to the Life Insurance Corporation of India, but only 1% of beneficiaries were receiving the claim benefits (average industry rate is 12-15%).
A second barrier to the coordination of benefit schemes in MP was the lack of a single unique identifier for each citizen. The Aadhaar personal identification number was rolled out across India from 2009 (Bhatia and Bhabha, 2017), connecting biometric data with an individual’s name, address, date of birth, gender and photograph. However, obtaining the Aadhaar remained legally voluntary, and although widely taken up (particularly by recipients of G2P transfers) it did not cover all citizens. Many benefit schemes were also governed by household eligibility, rather than personal circumstances – educational scholarships, BPL transfers, pensions and food rations, for example. These factors meant that each benefit scheme had created their own individual identifier codes for beneficiaries linked to their familial circumstances, inhibiting the sharing of data across agencies. The disbursement of a complex range of welfare provision in a country where only 40% of the population had a bank account in 2013 was further barrier to effective integration and consolidation of social protection (Bhatnagar and Gupta, 2013, page xvii). Three-quarters of the population of MP were living in villages and in 2010 one-third of them needed to commute more than 20km to make a transaction with a regulated financial institution (ibid, p3).The majority of benefit payments were being processed as cash or cheque, with no online tracking of the application progress available to either government officials or claimants, and no central record of disbursements across the wide suite of schemes.
Lastly, there was no effective monitoring or evaluation of the performance of different benefits schemes, either individually within departments or across the full range of government SP provision. As beneficiary data was recorded, processed and stored in myriad ways, it was not accessible to other government departments or the general public. This lack of transparency limited the potential for accountability measures to be put in place. It also meant that the government was unable to analyse the impact of each individual benefit or how the combination of benefits on offer interacted with each other to promote or limit holistic wellbeing in the population. Samagra was introduced in 2012 to address problems of fragmentation, poor targeting and inefficiency in the social protection system of Madhya Pradesh. It was also deemed a key component in the transformation of government social protection policy from a demand-driven and welfare-oriented model to one based on entitlements, automatically disbursed, as a constitutional right (Sharma, 2019). It has already significantly improved the inclusivity, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the state’s SP infrastructure by providing a single, unified social registry system incorporating both personal identification and household eligibility with verification capabilities through a well-designed, secure internet platform. The use of in-house IT designers has enhanced the replicability, scalability and sustainability of the database, and several other Indian states have drawn on Samagra’s design to upgrade their own SP systems. It also enabled to merge schemes that had similar objective. The consolidation and streamlining of numerous and overlapping benefit schemes in Madhya Pradesh has led to significant governmental financial savings through a reduction in required personnel formally employed across multifarious government departments. A single, centralised repository of individuals, linked to their household eligibility criteria, has also increased the inclusivity, efficiency and effectiveness of targeting, allowing eligible citizens to receive all the benefits they are entitled to without the need for multiple application and verification processes. In this way, the government has been able to direct their SP budget towards eligible citizens while reducing cases of duplicate or fraudulent claims, resulting in large savings, particularly with regard to the scholarship and pension programmes.
From a citizen’s perspective, Samagra has removed much of the complexity involved in ascertaining eligibility status, and reduced the time and confusion involved in the application process. SP information is more widely available through the portal, and beneficiaries receive their entitlement automatically, as long as their data is kept up to date on the system. This has led to increased governmental transparency and accountability, fewer citizens being left out, and increased protection for the most marginalised and vulnerable in society. Read the conclusion on TheDailyGuardian.com.