Written by Deepanwita Niyogi @deepanwita_t | Photo: Adithyan In 2013, Jharkhand became one of the first states to link Aadhaar to the payment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. In the past four years, 99 per cent of MGNREGA workers in the state have enrolled themselves for Aadhaar and an equal percentage of workers have opened bank accounts for MGNREGA. The figure is much higher than the national average—87 per cent MGNREGA workers across the country have bank accounts and 86 per cent have Aadhaar cards.

Call it the result of clerical oversights or hasty implementation of a programme, a bold initiative by the Jharkhand government to plug corruption and bring about transpare ncy in welfare schemes is backfiring, or at least, so it appears.

In 2013, Jharkhand became one of the first states to link Aadhaar to the payment under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA). Then its objective was to ensure direct transfer of wages to the bene ficiary’s bank account by seeding it with the 12-digit unique identification number on Aadhaar card. This would arrest fund leakages due to identification and authentication errors, such as the existence of duplicate or ghost beneficiaries, which is inherent in welfare schemes.

In the past four years, 99 per cent of MGNREGA workers in the state have enrolled themselves for Aadhaar and an equal percentage of workers have opened bank accounts for MGNREGA. These are much higher than the national average—87 per cent MGNREGA workers across the country have bank accounts and 86 per cent have Aadhaar cards. In fact in Jharkhand, the number of workers holding bank accounts has increased from 15 to almost 100 per cent in just one year, says Siddharth Tripa thi, MGNREGA commissioner of the state.

Beneficiaries of the scheme and activi sts working at the grassroots level, however, say the problems are far from over in the state. Many who could earlier benefit from the scheme are now without work or are not receiving wages. Then there are those whose hard-earned money gets deposited in others’ accounts.

In Jareya village of Ranchi district, women members of the village self-help group, told Down To Earth (DTE) that most of them have not received wages since opening bank accounts for MGNREGA a few months ago. “When we asked the MGNREGA mate (work supervisor) about the delay, she told us that probably our Aadhaar numbers have not been seeded with our bank accounts and advised us to visit the bank. But going to the bank at Namkum block would mean shelling out at least Rs 40. Who has that kind of money?” asks Meena Devi, who has been waiting for wages for the last two months.

Kuldeep Mishra, district resource person of Ramgarh, responsible for conducting social audits under MGNREGA, admits that people are not getting timely wages despite digital transfer. While Mishra does not provide a reason for such delays, village heads and panchayat functionaries say a new set of problems are emerging due to the initiative that was supposed to smoothen the functioning of the scheme.

Hit by overzealous reform

Saraswati Devi, former mukhiya (village head) of Rampur, says several people in the gram panchayat are not able to avail wages under MGNREGA as their bank accounts are yet to be seeded with Aadhaar. “Most people enrolled under the programme are unlettered. So there are a lot of discrepancies in the documents they submit while opening a bank account. One common discrepancy is inconsistent spellings of their names or that of their village. This defeats the seeding process,” says Mahadev Munda, current mukhiya of Rampur.

Those who have successfully managed to get their accounts seeded with Aadhaar are also not free from trouble. There is a lot of pressure on operators at the block office who maintain the management information system (MIS) of MGNREGA since the government launched the initiative of linking Aadhaar with MGNREGA, says James Herenj of non-profit Jharkhand NREGA Watch. They often have to work till late hours, and this is resulting in typing mistakes and errors in data entry. In many cases, someone’s Aadhaar number is getting linked to someone else’s bank account. As a result wages are getting credited to wrong accounts, says Herenj.

In 2016, ICICI Bank opened the MGNREGA account for Ramani Soren of Laylum village in Boram block. It assured door-to-door service. But she is yet to receive any as bank mitras have not visited her since. Down To Earth. One such irregularity came to the fore at a public hearing of the MGNREGA social audit conducted in Mandu block of Ramgarh district. Sanjay Manjhi from Jobla village claimed that his account has been credited with Rs 11,356 despite the fact that he did not participate in any MGNREGA works. The MIS shows that he has worked for 68 days on a farm pond. The auditor has now ordered an inquiry into the matter and asked the officials to recover the…