Comments
The Change
“Every single rural family, except those who are unwilling to take the connection, will have an electricity and a clean cooking gas facility by the year 2022,” reiterated the Finance Minister during her Budget speech.
Amongst the schemes for the underprivileged, 4 schemes — Ayushman Bharat, Ujjwala Yojana, Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maandhan (PM-SYM) and Swachh Bharat — have the ability to reach the last mile.
Budget 2019 rightfully focused on these schemes by increased budgetary allocation to Ayushman Bharat; making Ujjwala Yojana accessible to the whole rural India; introducing the pension scheme for SME retailers, which is an extension to PY-SYM and by expanding the scope of Swachh Bharat to solid waste management.
The Background
The mega health insurance scheme — Ayushman Bharath, announced in the Budget 2018 to provide a health insurance cover of ₹5 lakh to deprived families — has shown a notable headway so far. About 16,000 hospitals have been empanelled and there were more than 30 lakh beneficiaries.
But as the devil is in the detail, there are a few intricate factors that are deterring the effectiveness of the scheme. Prevalence of frauds, challenges in penetrating into States with no health scheme and issues with portability that allows a beneficiary from one State to go to another for treatment, have been the headwinds.
Coming to Ujjwala Yojana, the scheme that was launched to give free LPG connections to poor women has been a huge success going by the statistics. Till date more than 7 crore free LPG connections have been released to women residing in more than 700 districts.
But the poor being unable to refill the cylinder at market price for subsequent use calls into question the very purpose of the scheme.
Further, Pradhan Mantri Shram Yogi Maan-dhan (PM-SYM) which was introduced in the interim Budget of 2019, promising a minimum assured pension of ₹3,000 per month after the age of 60 years is assuring. This provides old age support to the workers in the unorganised sector that constitutes about 90 per cent of the India’s workforce.
The scheme seems to be on the track though it is too early to assess its progress. In less than 150 days of the implementation, the number of enrolments for the scheme stood at about 31 lakh.
Needless to say, the success of Swachh Bharat has been the talk of the town. With construction of 9.6 crore toilets and upgradation of 5.6 lakh villages as open defecation free since October 2014, the mission has reportedly brought in enormous health and environmental benefits. However, various reports suggest that a few toilets were not constructed as per the stated specifications making them useless.
The Verdict
With increased scope, schemes having last-mile connectivity have become more sundar .
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.