Vantala Singanna, from a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group of G Madugula block of Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, set out recently to understand why he doesn’t receive Rythu Bharosa benefits like his fellow farmers. Rythu Bharosa is a scheme of the A.P. Government that provides ₹13,500 per agricultural year over three instalments as financial assistance to farmers during a crop season. This is crucial for tribal farmers as they struggle to secure credit through financial institutions and are often looted by private money lenders. Singanna met functionaries ranging from village volunteers (appointed by the Government to improve last-mile public service delivery) to block agriculture and revenue officers, tribal welfare officers, and bank staff. He found that the Government had removed his name from the list of eligible beneficiaries.
Bank rejections
We at LibTech set out to investigate this phenomenon as the A.P. Government transferred the second instalment of benefits for this agricultural year in October 2021. (It will make the final transfer in January 2022.) We filed multiple Right to Information requests and interviewed implementing agencies. We met 80 farmers and visited banks to document their struggle through the process.
In May 2021, nearly 1.09 lakh farmers were identified as beneficiaries from the 11 tribal blocks of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency (ITDA), Paderu, and payments were approved by the Government. However, 5,660 farmers’ payments were rejected by the banks due to various technical reasons (bank rejections) across these blocks in the May 2021 transfers. We found that the majority of these bank rejections was due to software mapping failures by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI). Of the 5,660 cases, 5,029 remain unresolved. These farmers were also denied benefits in the October 2021 transfers. Collectively these farmers were denied ₹4.61 crore in two instalments. And the forest land-cultivating farmers will lose an additional ₹40 lakh in the upcoming third instalment.
Such experiences are critical for us to understand the structural architecture that creates such sagas. The Union Government’s PM KISAN scheme has also faced similar issues. However, the instalments are paid as soon as the farmers resolve the issue, unlike in Rythu Bharosa. Farmers with bank rejections formerly had one agricultural year to fix the issues and have their benefits transferred. But they only had four to six months to do it for the October 2021 instalment. And failure to do so resulted in the removal of their names from the beneficiary list.
No clarity of settlement
Given the limited access to banking infrastructure, mobile and road connectivity, tribal farmers find it difficult to resolve bank rejections on their own. There is also a lack of understanding of the settlement procedure among field functionaries and bank employees. Neither the Union Government nor the State Government has published written rules for block- and panchayat-level authorities on how to settle bank rejections. The decision to remove the names of farmers from the beneficiary list appears to have been taken at the State level without considering field realities. It is a violation of a provision of the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act that states that “every Gram Sabha shall be responsible for the identification or selection of persons as beneficiaries under the poverty alleviation and other programmes”.
The A.P. Government has done well to pay old-age pensions at the doorsteps of rights-holders in cash through the well-established village volunteer system. Given the robustness of the pension transfer mechanism and the maze of problems created by the opaque Aadhaar Payment Bridge System, it would be prudent for the A.P. Government to follow its own success model for the farmers facing bank rejections in Rythu Bharosa. Or it should allow all the farmers the choice of how they wish to get their entitlements.
There is no accountability assumed by any agency involved in rectifying bank rejections. The Departments of Agriculture and Tribal Welfare, the Grama Secretariats and Ward Secretariats, and UIDAI and NPCI that handle these transfers should all be willing to accept responsibility in ensuring that these entitlements reach farmers on time. Given the number of institutions and functionaries available, the state should immediately resolve bank rejections. The Government is now preparing to retry payments for all affected farmers. However, farmers like Singanna will be excluded unless the process gaps and complexities involved in the resolution of bank rejections are acknowledged.
Venkata Krishna Kagga and Chakradhar Buddha, and Ajay Palle Swaero, who contributed to the article, are researchers with LibTech India
