Investment in public health was preferred to job creation programmes and road building by 73% and 79% of respondents, respectively
As 128 children died of encephalitis in Bihar over 19 days to June 21, 2019, a new study reports that the state’s rural population prefers government investment in public healthcare over roads, jobs and cash transfers.
In a survey conducted by the Brookings Institution, an American research group, in an administrative block of Bihar, 3,800 respondents–comprising the poor, less-educated and disadvantaged caste groups–were asked to make a choice: an incremental (and hypothetical) budget for their block to be transferred directly to them as direct cash transfers (DCT), or budgetary allocations for better welfare services.
Only 13% wanted the funds to come their way via DCT. The majority (86%) wanted it to be invested in public healthcare (the remaining 1% had no opinion on the matter). Approximately 63% of respondents wanted the budget to be spent on new roads rather than the DCT scheme, the study found. Investment in public health was preferred to job creation programmes and road building by 73% and 79% of respondents, respectively.
“It would appear from these responses that some of the poorest citizens of one of the most economically underdeveloped parts of India prioritise public health well above job creation programmes and roads, with cash coming last,” said Stuti Khemani, one of the report’s co-authors and a senior economist at the World Bank’s Development Research Group.
Poor, third most populous state, Bihar gets 1% of transfer funds
The central government launched the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) programme on January 1, 2013, with the aim of “reforming Government delivery system by re-engineering the existing process in welfare schemes for simpler and faster flow of information/funds, and to ensure accurate targeting of the beneficiaries, de-duplication and reduction of fraud”.
This flow of funds to the public takes place through two modes, cash (DCT) or kind. During 2018-19, an estimated Rs 2,14,092 crore ($30.7 billion) was transferred to approximately 590 million beneficiaries in the country, and accounted for 65% of the total DBT provided by the central government…
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