 Hello everyone, my name is Deeksha Jain and I secured rank 22 in civil services examination 2018. In this video I will be talking in detail about chapter 10 of the economic survey which is titled effective use of technology for welfare scheme, case of MG NREGS which is commonly known as NREGA. So the historical background of the scheme first, so economic survey talks about how it has its roots in the food for work program which is mentioned in the Arthashastra during the modern times. After that even in Lucknow by Nawab Asafut Dalla in the making of Imam Badal this employment scheme was emphasized that people were paid with food for coming and working and building the Imam Badal. After that the Mahatma Gandhi NREGA scheme it was enacted in 2005 and it was implemented in 2006 and it aims to provide 100 days of guaranteed employment to people and wages against that employment. The purpose of NREGA what were the objectives with which NREGA was started. Number one is to ameliorate rural distress by providing work and wages. Number two is creating productive assets which are useful for the villages and in rural areas. Number three social inclusion, gender parity, social security and equitable growth so that these people who are facing droughts or who are facing problems agricultural issues have come up. They can look for employment, they can get their wages and they can improve the social equity even women were given reservation of a certain percentage in the scheme and they were also given employment so it is also empowering women by economically. So but there were certain problems in NREGA in its initial form not in its conceptualization but there were problems in certain implementation. For example widespread corruption, political interference, leakages and there was significant delay in payments. The problem with significant delay in payments is that if there is a farmer who needs money today and he has worked for 100 days under the NREGA scheme if he does not get that wage immediately then it is useless for him because his need for food, his need for various other you know things for survival is today. So this delay in payment was also a big problem which was being experienced in the original implementation of NREGA. Because of this the program was streamlined in 2015 and how was it streamlined? There was implementation of direct benefit transfer and it was linked with all Aadhaar linked payments which is called ALP. So because of the stringent biometric Aadhaar requirements there would be less likely ghost beneficiaries so less corruption and less loss of resources and less misallocation of resources and it would also cut a lot of bureaucratic red tape when the cash would be directly given to the people in their bank accounts. Because of this the problem in doing this most of the people and specially the lower strata of the society in rural India did not actually have a bank account in which they could receive the DBT. So the Jantan Yojna was launched so that there was larger financial inclusion and more people can be brought under the scheme so that they can receive their benefits without any leakages in between. So Pradhan Mantri Jantan Yojna actually addressed this problem of unbanked sector that you know it brought people under financial inclusion. This chapter then talks about the perceived benefits of direct benefit transfer. What are they? Primarily release of funds directly into the bank account. Checking of leakages. Third is instilling trust and confidence in the beneficiaries. If I am a beneficiary and if I receive my wage immediately in my bank account my trust in the government in the scheme and you know my sort of sense of security will naturally improve. Fourth is strong focus on security and fund monitoring. Naturally if there is so much digital payment happening then cyber security becomes at most important and fund monitoring also so that it does not lead to mega disaster because of hacking or any such thing. Number five is near real time tracking and monitoring to increase transparency. So because there was real time tracking there was also a lot of data was generated about the beneficiaries and it also introduced a lot of transparency. There are also certain initiatives mentioned which you know may be asked in prelims or may be useful to mention in means like NREGA soft. Now this is basically an e-government system to capture all NREGA related data at the state block in panchayat level. So it accumulates a lot of data helps in analyzing the distressed areas as well. There is GeoNREGA which focuses on basically making repository of all the assets that have been created under NREGA. It also has brought in GeoTagging which again you know sort of make sure that the assets that are created under NREGA are not just on paper but they are actually there in physical form. The third one is emphasis on individual beneficiary scheme. So for example earlier in NREGA people were making only common ponds, watershed systems or common properties but now even for individual beneficiaries things like goat sheds, vermicompost areas etc are also being made. So what this does is basically that the beneficiaries of NREGA will multiply and even the wages are increased after this has been implemented. The fourth thing is natural resource management, mission water conservation. So basically NREGA has been aligned even more closely with the idea of water conservation so a lot of water harvesting projects have been taken under NREGA. So what this chapter essentially focuses on, it highlights the benefits of careful and effective targeting of government schemes. So basically how to streamline government schemes, how to tap technology for better implementation of government schemes. So what are some of the effects that have happened post this sort of you know technological intervention and better implementation. The delays in the payment of wages in NREGA have reduced and because of that it has been able to address the distress of people in a much better manner. What the demand for work of NREGA has increased and the supply has also increased. The increasing number in muster forms basically the number of people apply so it shows that people are in fact enthusiastic about enrolling in NREGA. Now the fourth one is that vulnerable sections of society then needs have been met. So basically if there are women lower sections of the society physically disabled people they get payments directly in their bank account and they have certain you know they feel a certain sense of social security which has also helped made society more equitable. The fifth one is that by creating almost real-time data collection network it has been able to track distress levels in the society at the level of the district as well as the panchayat level. The next major area which is basically the conclusion of this chapter is the way forward that what are the lessons that we can take from this implementation in NREGA and what should be the way forward. The first thing is that NREGA data can be a huge source of indicators of distress so basically this data can be used to understand the society, the distress points in the society and to target government interventions in such a way that they can be more useful for the people. Number two is expansion of works under NREGA which basically means that you know how we have expanded to individual works as well so we should expand to different kinds of works to increase the number of works that are under NREGA. Third is upskilling of the labour in NREGA so basically by doing continuous labour and by giving some sort of training we can actually skill these people as well while giving them hundred days of employment. Number four is expanding the Jantanadhar mobile trinity to other welfare schemes so that the same benefits that have been seen in NREGA can also be seen in those other schemes as well. Number five is the use of digital infrastructure for micro-benefits so basically for other schemes like micro-insurance or any other like it has also been done in Ojwala that we can if there is enough financial inclusion and if we have a financially literate society then we can have more we can plug in more leakages and more schemes and give more benefits directly to the people. So that was that about this chapter in the economic survey. Thank you. Subscribe to our channel and click on the bell icon to get latest updates on upcoming videos.