India’s cumulative Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) figure since 2014 crossed Rs 25 trillion on Sunday, marking a landmark in the record quantum of transfer of benefits directly into the bank accounts of millions of beneficiaries under the Narendra Modi government.
To put the figure in context, India’s budget in the present financial year is nearly Rs 39.45 trillion.
The DBT transfers have been consistently growing each year, adding a big number of beneficiaries every year. While in 2019-20, over Rs 3 trillion were transferred through DBT, the quantum grew to Rs 5.5 trillion in 2020-21 and Rs 6.3 trillion in the last financial year. In this financial year so far, in less than six months, Rs 2.35 trillion has been transferred to beneficiaries. This means that nearly 56% of the DBT transfers, since its inception in 2014, have been done in the past two-and-a-half years with the government using DBT as a major tool to help people during the Covid pandemic which struck the country in March 2020.
“DBT was the saviour during the Covid pandemic as people continued to get benefits/subsidies directly into their bank accounts from government," an official said.
In the last financial year, nearly 73 crore people received DBT benefits in cash and 105 crore people received a DBT benefit in kind — many of these beneficiaries received more than one benefit, figures show.
The government also claims that it has saved a whopping Rs 2.2 trillion from leakages by using the DBT regime till date and by insisting on Aadhaar-linked bank accounts so that the money does not fall into wrong hands.
319 schemes of 53 central ministries are linked to the DBT regime.
The major schemes under which money or benefits in kind are transferred to beneficiaries include the LPG Payal scheme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Public Distribution System, Fertilizer, PM Awas Yojana, various scholarship schemes and the National Social Assistance Programme.
The DBT scheme began as a pilot in the United Progressive Alliance government in 2013-14 before it was taken to a much larger scale by the Narendra Modi government from 2015-16. The DBT transfer quantum touched Rs 1.9 trillion in 2017-18, before rising in a big way from 2019-20 onwards as more schemes were brought on board.
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