@Evening: 💵 Guess How Much India Saved Across Central Government Schemes, Thanks To DBT

📲 India's enviable digital infra

"In our own experience, DBT has entailed a saving of more than $27 billion just across key central government schemes."

Context: Ajay Seth, Secretary to the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), dropped this revelation recently at a meeting of the Global Partnership for Financial Inclusion.

• India made this huge saving in key central government schemes through direct benefit transfer (DBT), as it is swift and eliminates corruption, Seth said.

• "And since the transfers are all direct, end to end, and swift, there is little scope for corruption and leakages and removal of duplicate/ fake beneficiaries," he added.

Direct benefit transfer, or DBT. Citizens enrolled under DBT schemes receive monetary benefits from the ministry, state department, or implementing agency directly into their bank accounts.

• The DBT scheme, introduced in India in 2013, leverages the Jan Dhan-Aadhaar-Mobile (JAM) architecture to identify citizens under a variety of social welfare schemes.

• "The money under DBT is reaching directly into an Aadhaar-verified account with no possibility of fraud," FM Nirmala Sitharaman had said in November last year.

• The IMF has described India's deployment of a direct cash transfer scheme and other similar social welfare programmes as a "logistical marvel."

Digital public infrastructure, or DPI. In India, DPI-enabled DBT emerged as a boon for providing assistance and relief to millions of affected citizens.

• Examples of Indian DPIs are Aadhaar, CoWIN, and DigiLocker.

• The government was able to help millions by delivering vaccines and providing social protection services through DPI, Seth noted.

• DPI is inherently scalable, interoperable, innovation-friendly, and inclusive," according to the DEA Secretary.

• "With effective implementation of DPI, India leapfrogged 40 years of development and made progress in seven years, which was expected to be achieved in 47 years," the G20 Sherpa Amitabh Kant said recently.

• "Any country can use the already developed DPIs and innovate on the top of the same," the former NITI Aayog CEO added.

Next up: The Government of India announced 'digital public infrastructure for agriculture' as a prime focus area in its budget 2023-24.

🎧 Swarajya audiobook: 📙 Aravindan's discourse on Hindutva

Swarajya's contributing editor, Aravindan Neelakandan, and investor and writer Harsh Gupta Madhusudan discuss Aravindan's latest book, Hindutva: Origin, Evolution and Future.

• Published by Kali, an imprint of BlueOne Ink, the book looks at Hindutva in both "critical and holistic terms," which is a rare approach for this subject.

• In our audiobook, Neelakandan and Madhusudan discuss a whole bunch of topics — the basics of Hindu Dharma, the appeal of Hindutva, the theory of evolution, beliefs in other cultures and religions, and how to counter the prevailing anti-Hindu narrative.

• Neelakandan has previously authored books on sustainable agricultural technologies and traditional knowledge systems in Tamil, and co-authored Breaking India with Rajiv Malhotra.

• Former consultant and entrepreneur Madhusudan, too, has written books. He is the co-author of Derivatives (Cambridge University Press) and A New Idea Of India.

• There's an in-depth review of Hindutva and an author interview that you can catch on Swarajya, besides our audiobook.

Download the all-new Swarajya app to give it a listen.