Introduction 

The family stands as the key social institution in the social structures. The planning echelon in both income and spending are defined only in its context. This necessitates its distinctive identification as a Unique Unit. After successfully implementing Aadhar, for personal identification, it was logical to further advance it to the level of a universal family ID system. Manohar Lal Khattar, Chief Minister of Haryana has rightly reiterated in this context: "In India, we have a culture of considering the person and family as one unit. Taking this a step forward, the flagship scheme of Parivar Pehchan Patra was launched in 2015 for the identification of actual needy families in the State."

Haryana has an area of 44,212 sq. km. and has an estimated population of 25,352,462 persons inhabiting in 7356 villages of 140 blocks of the twenty-two districts of the state. It is the front-runner in rolling out a large number of state and centrally sponsored social and welfare schemes with extensive coverage. In the recent years, a total of 223 schemes have been launched, out of which 48 are being financed by the Central Government whereas 175 are being funded by the State Government. During the course of their implementation the state has achieved an enviable coordination and integration of workflows, processes and data inviolability.

The Haryana government had issued a gazette notification in December, 2020 for making Family ID Cards or Parivar Pehchan Patras (PPPs). This scheme envisages at creating a common, comprehensive, reliable, integrated and precise database of all the families residing in Haryana. It will be utilized by various departments/agencies of the state for implementing welfare scheme and service delivery. 

This Family ID, an eight-digit number, has also been linked with the individual’s Aadhaar and mobile numbers. It contains details of date of birth, age, caste, income group, full address, Aadhaar card number, Voter ID, contact details, and ration card details of every family. 

In other words, the PPP is:-

• Unique ID of every family with core attributes

• Platform for delivery of citizen & family centric benefit schemes in the State Government. 

• Auto selection of beneficiaries. 

• User data for 7.45 Lakh families including the data on 1.67 Lakh BPL families.

Major Objectives

It is a step towards e-governance with two-fold aim, i.e. 

(i) Beneficiary Identification, 

ii) Proactive Scheme Delivery 

Its objectives are:

• To eliminate or to minimize submission of documents. 

• To check repeated submission of the same documents for different schemes. 

• To create a ‘paperless’, ‘faceless’ service delivery system at the doorstep of every citizen. 

• Anytime and anywhere implementation of the government schemes, subsidies, services and benefits. 

• Transparent identification of beneficiaries. 

• Reduction of corruption in the identification of beneficiaries of various schemes, subsidies, services and benefits. 

The primary objective of the PPP is to create authentic, verified and reliable data of all families in Haryana. It identifies each and every family of the state and keeps the basic data of the family, provided with its consent, in a digital format. Each family has been provided an eight digit Family-Id which is linked to the records of birth, death and marriage to ensure automatic updation data as and when such life events happen. Family ID has been linked with the schemes for scholarships, subsidies and pensions to ensure consistency and reliability and automatic selection of the beneficiaries of various schemes, subsidies and pensions. Family Id database will be used to determine eligibility and automatic self-selection of beneficiaries for receiving multiple benefits. Therefore, once it is created, families need not apply for receiving benefits under various schemes. 

Governance Agenda for Social Inclusion

The discourse on public administration expects it to be responsive to the predictable needs of the society and to conjure the future strategies for the evolving socio-economic transformation. The technological capabilities and innovative governance processes are the key elements for this purpose. The objective of the technological tools and capabilities is to create a networked society and government and the focus of processes is to stimulate inclusive and equitable economic growth, social and financial stability, and provide universally accessible health and education. 

E-governance and digitisation are the two complementary dimensions to this networked government which operates in an ecosystem powered by data and information. Although e-governance is more about the delivery of public services, its very success and quality depend upon the accuracy, reliability and focus of digitisation. Hence efficient management of information, in the changed priorities, has become critical for the business of government.

Imperatives for a citizen-centric government ordain an essential rethinking across various levels and agencies of the government about the entire service delivery structure from the perspective of a citizen. Far from being a one-time exercise, it has to be an ongoing and incremental process. This demands a holistic approach for the creation of a dependable service delivery ethos which is upheld by each level of government for the incessant quest for improvement and value addition for systemic efficiency and citizen trust. This basically involves giving to citizens the necessary access to government programs, services, and information and also their empowerment through engagement of stakeholders in the process of decision making. The rethinking is also needed in this context to secure privacy and data security within the precincts of law and consent, by invoking regulatory processes. This is needed to ensure their protection against corruption and deceit. In this background, the e-government infrastructure delivers online administrative services only on the strength of a comprehensive and trustworthy database of focused groups. 

The e-governance modules have emphasised across the world that citizen-centricity is a process approach that weighs heavily in terms of impact as well as long-term sustainability. This citizen focus lies beyond the organisational structures and hierarchies of government and converges with multi-jurisdictional and multi-sectorial programs to improve productivity and cost efficiency in the use of public funds. For taking the maximum advantage of the all-powerful web technology, the citizen-centricity needs to take a single view of his or her digital identity within a single need assessment and delivery structure. This is the only effectual way to recognise each and every individual who are parts of ‘invisible’ masses for the governments and the official organisations. The biggest challenge of e-government is, therefore, to make them visible for counting for fulfilling the state’s social and welfare obligations. 

The empowering environment of e-Government is able to cover a sizeable area and diverse social groups. It has an enormous potential to leverage information and communication technologies for addressing the challenges and for stimulating socio-economic development by a prudent use of government’s own resources. A large number of schemes in the core sector are being managed and offered in India by the central and state governments. The main thrust of changeover of e-government, in the ambit of social and welfare schemes is that of the digitisation of data pertaining to individual and family income, health, livelihood, education and social identity. 

Aadhar has been to a great extent a landmark for creating a unique centralised databank for the identification and authentication over 1.3 billion population. However, the lack of systematic identification of sizeable segments of the population, particularly the vulnerable and poor, was felt in many regions and areas during COVID-19 pandemic. This has underscored the need for an umbrella approach for the inclusion of vulnerable sections.

Contextualizing Data

At the national level, a decennial population enumeration exercise is conducted through census by the Government of India for generating extensive datasets.  Yet, while rolling out social protection programmes, need for more granular data has been felt  right from the block and panchayat levels to household levels. Due to inconsistent and somewhat unreliable data planning, allocations and benefits from flagship programmes like MNREGA and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY), etc. have been often noticed. This further underlines the need for gathering scheme specific data.

The present mode of collection, handling and digitisation leaves much to be desired. Often an elementary approach is adopted in compiling programme and scheme-specific data when digitisation is done manually. Alternatively, a data enabled process is employed for collecting data with mobiles or cloud based applications for catering to decision support systems of different government departments. This makes the basis for decision-making and implementation of the Management Information Systems (MIS) of state governments and their agencies.  This often misses critical data points, particularly in the overall operation of concurrent welfare and livelihood generation programmes.

At times, a number of schemes with similar features and targeted beneficiaries—both Centre as well as state sponsored are, consequently, implemented by the government agencies.  In the absence of reliable demographic and historic data, these follow the individual mandates and often overlook the lateral and collateral factors such as seasonality and occupational variances, benefits from multiple schemes, migration and reverse-migration. As a result, gaps are created for manipulation at the ground level. This leads to mis-targetting of welfare beneficiaries and consequent abundance of ghost workers payrolls of various schemes.

The beneficiary is often required to deal with multiple agencies and offices for repeatedly submitting personal and verification details. In an inward looking system, the governance system is largely demand based. Bereft of any entitlement, benefits were available only on demand and the citizens are expected to be well conversant with the rules, regulations and delivery procedures of each individual scheme. All the qualifying documents, as the case may be, like category, caste, income and employment status have to be kept ready every time for availing welfare doles. 

This happens because similar schemes demand common eligibility credentials being handled by different department. The implementation culture of welfare programmes are governed by the rule book with scant regard for accountability and facilitation.  The focus seems to be on the quantitative performance rather than on the qualitative impact of government’s welfare outreach. In absence of any sharing arrangements, there is an avoidable multiplicity of outmoded routines of petty power brokers and unscrupulous among the targeted beneficiaries are able to take advantage from it.

The decentralised mode of implementation suits the individual departments. Consequently, agency-specific procedure, starting with unique format for application and ending with final approval and disbursal with exclusive delivery outlet are followed by them.  Sometimes applicants have to approach multiple offices for completing the application process, or for the verification prior to sanction and disbursal. Ironically, often the different offices have compliance issues due to diverse the instructions and procedures of various organizations and tend to vied with each other.  A system is, therefore, needed to ascertain whether a person is receiving benefits from similar schemes being run by different departments.

Remodeling Identification for Inclusion

In order to avoid overlapping and duplication in various schemes, convergence of beneficiary data on entitlement is needed for the sake of rationalized and simplification. This approach will, on the one hand, protect the citizens from intricacies of rules, formats, and processes of the welfare schemes schemes and save them trouble of dealing with multiple offices for admissibility scrutiny and follow-up visits. On the other hand, the simplification by one-time authentication of eligibility and entitlement with verified details pertaining to families will be applied in to all the schemes. It will have to be accepted by all the agencies without any discretionary restriction. 

Similarly, a uniform and integrated application format, available from a common government portal or platform will facilitate data capturing. Functioning as the starting point for automation, this platform can have a real-time register of beneficiaries with automatic updation of profile archived at the backend for scheme-specific classification and an index based quick tracking. The government stands to gain from this switchover in terms of budgeting, financial discipline, year-to-date consolidated or scheme-wise funds utilisations, etc. On the governance side, an objective eligibility criterion eliminates rent seeking with the help of a transparent and process based financial inclusion.  The essence of good governance lies in adoption of a holistic approach for implementing the welfare schemes by switching over to governance model from demand-driven reactive one to entitlement based proactive one.  

Global Family Registration

In the above context, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India has announced that it will assist the government in improving the effectiveness of its welfare schemes and program by reducing “inherent inadequacies and gaps” caused by “nonstandard beneficiary identification.” The ultimate objective is to develop a “global family registration” in which each member of a family will have a Unique ID.

This modulation has been suggested to allow the state governments to enable them to identify the intended beneficiaries with their family credentials. It is an adaptation of population registration with household details on births, deaths, pensions, scholarships, PDS and marriages. These can be linked with the new family database. It is a rational approach for logical sanctioning of benefits in a hassle free manner because it eliminates the repeated need for producing supporting documents.

The groups needing financial inclusion and empowerment like the  BPL and the SC/ST families and  persons with disabilities and individuals working in unorganized sector are being registered by various departments / agencies. These can be better identified through integration of the individual data with the family register. This ‘single window’ concept shall create an enabling environment in which automatic eligibility based selection can provide benefit to the beneficiaries of same type though a common and integrated system and facilitate Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) without any manual intervention. 

Advantages of Remodeled Identification Unit

Adoption of the family based data construction will go a long way in creating a common, self-improving and unified platform available to all the departments for implementing the state as well as central government schemes for planning as well monitoring. Moreover, an integrated database of the residents and all families will, in deed be,  a quantum jump as the single point access to the large array of welfare services. 

On Governance Side

• Huge savings in manpower expenditure by taking recourse to one time exercise for capturing, updating and maintaining data. 

• MIS based scheme automation to facilitate quick and informed decisions and would eliminate frauds, bogus and duplicate beneficiaries through better monitoring, control and implementation.

• Prompt and proactive services shall be available to the eligible beneficiaries. 

• Pro-active inclusion by identifying the persons/families who are left outside the social security net for any reason, like SC/ST/OBC the children eligible for scholarships. 

On Operational Side

• Revamped Management Information System shall facilitate prompt and informed decisions and sanctions to beneficiaries.

• Data history of scheme and beneficiary shall be created.

• Life cycle history of an individual and family beneficiaries shall be available.

• Eliminate corruption through detection of frauds and bogus beneficiary registration.

• Better monitoring and control to detect overlapping and duplicate benefits from schemes of similar nature being managed by different departments or agencies shall be possible.

Conclusion

A Paradigm Shift in Welfare Delivery

The governments around the world face the challenge of ensuring that the rules governing social assistance programs for the poor are implemented as intended. Social assistance programs like cash transfers and food subsidies are among the primary channels through which people interact with their government. But service delivery presents a complex challenge. Clarity on the end-to-end scheme delivery process is, therefore, required. This includes the processes of enrollment of beneficiaries , validation of information provided by them and seamless disbursement of benefits under different schemes.

Transparency and accountability between the government and its citizens are also critical for effective public service delivery. This can be ensured if service delivery mechanism is formulated within the Government framework, with minimum role of non-governmental agencies and strict controls put in place for maintaining beneficiary information and ensuring privacy and integrity of the maintained data.