There is a great debate as India's Think tank wants to speed ahead with Cash Transfer or Benefits Transfer to the excluded.Read on

1. Effective Conditional Cash Transfer as a
Development Tool in India
30th Skoch Summit
14th Thinkers & Writers Forum
Hotel Shangrila
September – 18-19th 2012
New Delhi
Santanu Sengupta
Secretary, Change Innovators Society
& Director, ACMFI - African Centre
for Mobile Financial Inclusion

2. Revisiting CCT : Definition
CCT is an effective way of government spending,
like education, healthcare, particularly on Women folks to
come out of their vulnerability during child birth, sanitation,
road development and community projects, where the
beneficiaries earn wages or stipends against a specific set of
tasks.
Modern day CCT is highly structured, following the success of
the Bolsa Familia programme in Brazil and sweeping Latam
Ms Pamela Cox deputed as ADB Vice president in charge of
Asia Pacific at Manila, Philippines for embarking on a mission
mode programme in the Far East.

3. •
Cont…
Outside China, Indonesia, Indo-China, Vietnam and now even
Myanmar is in big focus for such financial inclusion as a pivot
for further equitable & inclusive growth in the region.
But real test lies in South Asia, a melting pot of 1.7 billion
people is the next biggest common market of all. And
everything boils down to India’s story of inclusion & by skillful
adoption of CCT.
The steps taken in this direction, with UID, cashless payments
through MNREGS, various state government initiatives to stop
the huge unproductive leakages, IS a questionable, debatable
issue leading to this important question.
Will CCT work in India?

4. Various forms of CCT
A brief mention has been made about why these
programme now being called CCT as an ECONOMIC
instrument whereby the governments of varying
ideological bias has been increasingly relying on such
instruments as a public policy. The underlying theme is
pretty simple.

5. - Address the need of the vulnerable section and provide budgetary
support for them
- Instead of generalized subsidy it is targeted and designed and aimed
at delivering to the targeted segment of the society.
- It is designed and made in such a manner that the benefits that accrues
to the beneficiaries are discernible to them and they willingly embrace
it with renewed vigour.
- Governments have by and large by these methods minimized leakages
and have been able to lessen the intermediation and wastage.
- By doing so these targeted investments have been helping form long
term assets to a country, saving costly outages, and mismanagement of
development funds, reduction of cost, and most of all a prosperous
healthier society.

6. 
Replacement of Archaic law & regulations by more modern
practical enactment .
- Usage of ICT platform & enabling environment & electronic
payment gateway.
- Delivery mechanism of cash, direct to the beneficiaries.
- Attachment of conditionalities easily identifiable by the
beneficiary to induce her/him to use.
- Multilayer propagation and capacity building programme
popularize the programmers' for awareness development
- Strong supervisory control at various levels so that the
programme becomes a success story.
Continuous up-gradation and changes to the initiated one
following rapid transformation and changing needs of the
beneficiaries.

7. DESIGNING CCTS

9. How it worked in other countries
CGAP has a series of country report on G2P,
highlighting how the Latin American countries have
managed their social inclusive programme through
effective CCT. The report by Sarah Rotman and her
team has been initially documented in 2009 and later
published in the form of a PPT
For general viewing in Slide share. I am drawing some
relevant slides and references from the country reports
on Brazil, Mexico, Colombia & South Africa.

10. We find that during Lula government’s first term,
6.57 million were enrolled out of 197 million population or
barely about 3%.
In the interim 2006-2009 it remained in a plateau at between
10.97 10.94 10.56, and then spurted further to 13 million at
the end of 2011, still below 10% of the overall population.
But the impact and the effectiveness of 3 conducted
programmes, that President Lula’s workers Party continued to
hold on to poor impressively even on to the next incumbent
Dilma Roussef, successor of President Lula.
A brilliant public policy shift, initiating a worldwide trend.
WHY SO? Let us refer to the report by CGAP

11. We find that during Lula government’s first term,
6.57 million were enrolled out of 197 million population or
barely about 3%.
In the interim 2006-2009 it remained in a plateau at between
10.97 10.94 10.56, and then spurted further to 13 million at
the end of 2011, still below 10% of the overall population.
But the impact and the effectiveness of 3 conducted
programmes, that President Lula’s workers Party continued to
hold on to poor impressively even on to the next incumbent
Dilma Roussef, successor of President Lula.
A brilliant public policy shift, initiating a worldwide trend.
WHY SO? Let us refer to the report by CGAP

12. Brazil Case Study - 1

14. Oportunidades which was started
during the 1994 financial crisis
enrolled roughly 300,000 people
initially has now covered more than
30 million Mexicans till 2010.

15. Mexican : Oportunidades
Mexican : Oportunida

17. Mexican : Oportunidades

19. Prognosis : From Cash to Plastic & Savings

20. SOUTH AFRICAN CASE STUDY

25. What are G2P payments?
Government-to-Person Social Safety Net
(G2P) Payments (SSN) Programs
Employee Payments Social Transfers Noncash Support
(wages, pensions)
To better off Conditional Food
employees Transfers
To low-income Unconditional Price Subsidies
170 million
employees Transfers
Workfare Fee Waivers
MILLIONS

32. WHO ALL ARE IN THE FRONT

33. Towards Electronic Payments Over Time
33

34. WHO ALL ARE IN THE FRONT

35. Who Plays what role
Rural Scene
URBAN SCENES
Data Centres
Citizens

36. TARGET CLIENTS / BENEFICIARIES
Business Centre
People
Govt
Business People
Centre
Money
Transactions

37. CCT: RelevanceRelevance to India
to India

We have examined some major initiatives across the world except
the P4 G2P programme which has significant CCT progamme inbuilt
into it in Philippines.
In India’s case it is imperative for us to remember that India
happen to be one of the foremost countries in the world which has a
huge subsidy based social inclusion programme totalling close to a
hopping Rs 135000 crore or close to $ 27 billion.
Despite that on individual scale our Human development index has
been pretty poor and perhaps the worst amongst the BRICS nation.

38. India perspective : continued
- Like PDS intended for the poorer section finds its way into the black
market and poorer section suffers. Same applies to subsidized Kerosene,
Cooking gas and many other central or state benevolent progammes
which as struggling to be effective tool for looking after the poorer
section as there as hardly any effective frame work for monitoring the
pooling essential data for the beneficiary clients.
- During the 1st UPA regime it forged the ideation of NREGS as discussed
and UPA tentatively started 100 days guaranteed work in about 100
districts in the country as pilot phase. Despite sketchy initially it later
transpired to be a grand success for the UPA.It has extended to other
remaining Districts.
Cont……

39. - But in the practical discourses or implementation time both identification
as also awarding of jobs, work audit, and finally payment to the
beneficiaries is delayed beyond reasonable limits.
- Due to all these negative aspects India’s policy planners have been
mulling actively using CCT as a tool to minimize all these negative
aspects of the development assistance programme buoyed by the
success story of the NREGS programme.Let us examine in the light
of the current CCT proliferation who CCT can play an upshot to the early
success of MNREGS and beyond, and that it cannot.
- MNREGS can be the mother of all CCTs, if it could be streamlined
effectively as the Think tank is seriously trying. Hence I would not like to
delve deep into its functioning, because MNREGS is bringing gradually a
huge numbers of core competent areas like ICTs & management for
financial services delivery in place. …………………………..Contd..

40. Conclusion
•
In continuation of the big bang reforms push the UPA II is trying to fast track
reform agenda in to parallel tracks while trying to give a direction to the beleaguered
economy . In the social sector the policy is :
1) Target the needy and make sure the Safety net covers reaches them
2) Attack leakages, pilferages and wastage thereby reduce subsidy burden .
But in doing fine balancing act whether it actually does manage to do it or bring
further confusion and burden to the common man will be an acid test of the regime.
• But it is possible to emulate this paradigm shift better than even the LATAM
BRETHREN, despite their early start they have, if MNREGS, UID, eGov, Financial
Inclusion and many other parallel initiatives are harnessed under a Centrally
monitored programme with very stringent evaluation & impact measurement
tools to make it work on the ground.
• CCT part 3 will be the final series culmination in the next Skoch programme
prescribing ho it can be effectively work in India to a better managed inclusive
society.

41. Thank You
Santanu Sengupta
Director, Corporate Affairs and Finance
ACMFI - African Centre for Mobile Financial Inclusion
santanu@acmfi.org/acmfi2010@gmail.com