India’s first National Social Security Platform to be Developed by Deit Y

India's first national social security platform will be developed by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), which has been entrusted with the task following the intervention of the Prime Minister's Office to end the tug of war between three central ministries. 

Officials said the PMO stepped in after the ministries of labour, finance, and communications and IT could not reach consensus on who should set up the backbone for distributing social security benefits. 

"It has been decided that DeitY will use the socio-economic caste census to establish the identity of all resident beneficiaries. This will be seeded with Aadhaar and Jan Dhan accounts of all the beneficiaries for direct transfer of benefits as we go forward," acording to a senior official, requesting not to be identified. DeitY will develop the platform while the other ministries will use this platform to authenticate their beneficiaries, the official said. 

Finance minister Arun Jaitley had in his budget speech said that the government will develop a national social security platform for handing out monetary benefits. Officials said that once the platform is established, beneficiaries under various schemes will have to enrol with the ministries concerned which are offering benefits under the particular schemes. 

Following this, the line ministry will reach out to the national platform to authenticate the applicant and once authenticated using Aadhaar, the benefits will be automatically transferred to the accounts of the beneficiary, thus doing away with middlemen. Multiple Benefits Providing social security to Indians has been one of the key focus areas of various schemes launched by the Narendra Modi-led NDA government. Most of these schemes require the beneficiary to pay a small amount as premium or contribution. While the Jan Dhan scheme launched in 2014 aimed to provide a bank account along with a Rupay debit card to every Indian household, the Jan Suraksha Scheme launched in 2015 aimed to provide a social security net to Indians. 

Under Jan Suraksha, the government brought in three schemes - Suraksha Bima Yojana providing an accident cover, Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana providing a life insurance cover and the Atal Pension Yojana for old age pension. Besides, there is a new health insurance scheme announced in this year's budget along with old age pension scheme and widows' pension scheme that run across sectors and are administered by nodal ministries such as finance, labour, health, education and social welfare. 

In 2015-16, the government disbursed Rs 61,824 crore for 59 schemes through direct benefit transfer. Of this, .`16,496 crore was disbursed through Aadhaarlinked bank accounts.