Direct Benefit Transfer Can Have Major Impact On Poverty, Nutrition Levels: World Bank Official

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s direct benefit transfer (DBT) scheme can have a major impact on poverty levels and nutrition, a senior official of the World Bank said Sunday. The DBT scheme can have a major impact on poverty levels, access and nutrition, said Junaid Kamal Ahmad, Country Director for the World Bank in India, adding “whether it has any impact on outcomes of learning – mixed results so far.”

Ahmad advocated that the DBT scheme be made a part of the broader reform programme in schools to achieve desired goals. “DBT has to be part of a broader reform programme in the school system,” he said in his address at a conference on DBT in education organised by the Centre for Civil Society (CCS).

Citing the huge impact of conditional grant in improving enrolment of girls in secondary education in his home country Bangladesh, he stressed on the importance of decentralisation of schools. The conditional stipend for girls going for secondary education in Bangladesh led to a movement to bring girls to schools and the enrolments rose to 53 per cent of the total strength, he said.

Ahmad said the DBT scheme should be enabled across every single service through investing in capacity of states to bring together the functions of unique IDs, financial systems, financial transfers and registry. CCS president Parth Shah called for complimentary interventions like ease of opening schools, fixing accountability and measuring learning outcomes to boost DBT’s effects on education.

With inputs from PTI