Social justice: welfare schemes, health, education, poverty and hunger

Pradhan Mantri Janjati Adivasi Nyaya Maha Abhiyan (PM JANMAN) covers every household in a tribal habitation. Saturation makes the area the unit, so nobody inside it is selected. The earlier approach ranked individual beneficiaries.

Why saturation suits this group

Exclusion was the bigger error: Targeting fails a household without a ration card or land record, and many tribal hamlets have neither.

Benefits reinforce each other: A road makes the health centre usable, so delivering both together is worth more than either alone.

What its success depends on

Getting the unit right: Tribal settlements are scattered, so coverage must be counted by habitation.

An honest baseline: The denominator decides the claim, so weak enumeration can show full coverage where households were never counted.

Convergence must happen: Work runs across ministries, so one department falling behind stalls the village.

Saturation removes the problem of whom to choose, but shifts the burden to enumeration and convergence. It should be judged by outcomes, not taps counted.

Decode

Two demands: the merits against the older approach, and the conditions for success.

Implicit demand

Saturation solves an identification problem, so ask what new problem it creates.

Architecture

What changed → why it suits this group → what success depends on → verdict.

Articulation

Anchor: PM JANMAN, exclusion error in targeting, habitation as the unit, convergence across ministries. Money line: it transfers the burden to enumeration and convergence.

The schemes

PM JANMAN, announced in 2023, covers particularly vulnerable tribal groups through several ministries together.

There are 75 such groups, spread across eighteen states and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, announced in 2024, extends the same approach to tribal majority villages.

The interventions include housing, roads, piped water, electricity, mobile connectivity, anganwadis and hostels.

Jal Jeevan Mission and Swachh Bharat follow the same saturation logic for water and sanitation.

Targeting against saturation

Targeting produces two errors: including the ineligible, and excluding the eligible.

Indian experience suggests exclusion is the costlier of the two, especially for undocumented households.

Saturation removes the survey, the appeal and the political argument over a list.

It costs more, since the non poor within the area are also covered.

The Socio Economic and Caste Census was an attempt to make targeting evidence based.

Universal provision of a public good is a stronger version of the same idea.

Nobody has to rank households or defend a list, so the local official loses the discretion that invited rent.

Conditions and cautions

PESA and the gram sabha should approve what is built, so that the design fits local practice.

Operation and maintenance is usually unfunded, so an asset built once decays quickly.

Staff vacancies in remote blocks are the practical limit on any convergence model.

Outcome measures such as nutrition and school attendance should sit beside output counts.

Aspirational Blocks Programme uses the same idea of a defined area rather than a chosen household.

Recognition under the Forest Rights Act matters, because a habitation without legal status is hard to build in.

The Viksit Bharat Guarantee for Rozgar and Ajeevika Mission Gramin Act, 2025 (VB G RAM G) has replaced MGNREGA. A rural household now has a claim to 125 days of work. An urban household has none.

Why the asymmetry exists

It answered a rural crisis: The 2005 law was framed when agrarian distress dominated, so the design followed the problem of its time.

What exists is not a guarantee: The Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY NULM) offers skilling and credit, but no right to wages.

The case for an urban programme

Urban work is volatile: Most urban workers are informal and paid daily, so a fortnight without work becomes a food crisis.

Cities have unfinished work: Waste management, water bodies, parks and care services all need hands, and the tasks range from unskilled to semi skilled.

States have already tried it: Kerala began an urban scheme in 2010, and Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan followed.

Why it is harder than the rural version

Who counts as a resident: A migrant without local papers is the person to reach, so entitlement must be portable.

The wage must self select: Set too high it distorts the labour market, and set too low it attracts nobody.

Municipalities are weak: Urban local bodies lack the staff and untied funds a demand driven guarantee needs.

The rural guarantee itself has changed: VB G RAM G makes states bear forty per cent, and pauses works during the farming season.

The asymmetry is historical rather than principled. An urban guarantee is defensible, if municipalities run it with portable entitlement and a self selecting wage.

Decode

Two demands: explain the asymmetry, then argue the case for an urban programme.

Implicit demand

An urban guarantee is not a rural one moved to a city, so the design differences carry the marks.

Architecture

The gap → why it exists → the case for → why it is harder → verdict.

Articulation

Anchor: VB G RAM G and the 125 day guarantee, DAY NULM, the 2020 reverse migration, the Kerala and Rajasthan schemes. Money line: the asymmetry is historical rather than principled.

The present position

VB G RAM G replaced MGNREGA after the Bill was passed in December 2025.

The guarantee rises from 100 to 125 days, and the unemployment allowance is retained.

Funding becomes a centrally sponsored pattern of 60:40, and 90:10 for Himalayan and north eastern states.

A state must bear any expenditure above the normative allocation fixed by the centre.

Works may be paused for up to sixty days during sowing and harvesting.

Plans now sit in four domains: water security, rural infrastructure, livelihood assets and weather resilience.

DAY NULM, from 2013, covers skill training, self employment credit and shelters for the homeless.

PM SVANidhi provides working capital loans to street vendors.

The state experiments

Kerala launched the Ayyankali urban employment guarantee scheme in 2010.

Odisha ran an urban wage employment initiative during the pandemic.

Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand introduced urban schemes in 2020.

Rajasthan announced an urban employment guarantee of a hundred days in 2022.

These schemes were largely funded by states, which limits their scale.

Evaluations point to weak awareness and delayed wage payment as the common problems.

Design questions

Any work in drains or sewers must be mechanised, since safety cannot be traded for employment.

Care work, crèches and elder support draw women into the scheme, where earthwork does not.

Works should suit urban conditions, since land for earthwork is scarce in dense settlements.

Care work, waste management and urban commons are the most cited categories of work.

Women's participation could rise if worksites are close and hours are flexible.

Portability matters, because the urban poor move between cities within a year.

Cost estimates vary widely with the wage rate and the number of days guaranteed.

The Fifteenth Finance Commission raised local body grants, which could support such a scheme.

A guaranteed wage raises the rate a worker can refuse, which matters most where bargaining power is weakest.

Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM JAY) offers five lakh rupees of hospital cover. It reaches the poorest two fifths of households. Out of pocket spending has fallen as a share of health expenditure, yet families still pay heavily.

Why the fall is smaller than expected

The cover begins at admission: Most household spending goes on medicines, tests and doctor visits, none of which is covered.

A card is not a hospital: Empanelled hospitals cluster in cities, so a family in a poorly served district must travel and pay.

Package rates invite informal charges: Where the fixed rate is below cost, hospitals refuse the case or bill the patient for the difference.

The missing middle: Households above the eligibility line but without insurance carry the whole cost themselves.

Chronic illness is an outpatient problem: Diabetes and hypertension need medicine every month, which is where recurring expenditure arises.

Can insurance replace public provision

Demand without supply raises price: Purchasing power created where no hospital exists attracts private entry at a cost the scheme absorbs.

Prevention cannot be purchased: Ayushman Arogya Mandir centres for screening and primary care reduce the hospitalisation that insurance pays for.

Regulation follows provision: A government that only buys care has weaker control over quality than one that also runs hospitals.

The comparative record: Countries that reached universal coverage built public primary care first, and bought hospital care later.

Insurance covers the catastrophic tail while public provision covers the everyday, so neither can stand in for the other. Protection will improve when medicines and outpatient care come inside the scheme.

Decode

Two demands: reasons for the gap, then a judgment on substitution.

Implicit demand

Insurance is demand side financing, so its limits follow from what supply exists.

Architecture

The claim with evidence → why the fall is small → can it substitute → verdict.

Articulation

Anchor: PM JAY cover, outpatient and medicine spending, empanelment gaps, the missing middle, Ayushman Arogya Mandir. Money line: insurance covers the catastrophic tail, public provision covers the everyday.

The system

PM JAY was launched in 2018 and covers secondary and tertiary hospitalisation.

It replaced the earlier Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, which offered far smaller cover.

Cover was extended in 2024 to all citizens above seventy, irrespective of income.

Several states run their own schemes, and some have merged them with the national one.

Ayushman Arogya Mandir centres were created to deliver primary care and screening.

The National Health Policy, 2017 set a target of two and a half per cent of output for public health spending.

The evidence

National Health Accounts estimates show out of pocket spending falling as a share of total health expenditure.

Medicines and outpatient care together account for the larger part of household health spending.

NITI Aayog examined the missing middle in a 2021 report on health insurance.

Empanelment is thin in several states with the weakest private hospital networks.

Studies find limited effect of hospital insurance on catastrophic expenditure where outpatient care is excluded.

Fraud and claim denial have both been documented, and states run audit units for them.

What would close the gap

Extend cover to outpatient consultation, diagnostics and essential medicines.

Strengthen free medicine schemes, as Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan have done.

Invest in district hospitals, since purchasing cannot create capacity where none exists.

Revise package rates on a costing study, to reduce informal charges.

Regulate private providers through the Clinical Establishments Act, which many states have not adopted.

Raise public health spending, which remains near two per cent of output.

Manual scavenging has been prohibited since 1993, and again by the 2013 Act. That law also covers hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks. Several hundred workers have still died in them over five years.

Why it persists

Caste supplies the workforce: The work is still assigned by birth, and little else opens to those communities.

Contracting hides the employer: Municipalities outsource cleaning to contractors, who hire daily labour without equipment, so liability disappears.

The infrastructure creates the need: Septic tanks and open drains remain common, since toilets were built faster than treatment systems.

The mechanisation and rehabilitation approach

What the scheme does: The National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) profiles sewer workers, supplies safety gear and subsidises cleaning machines.

Where NAMASTE falls short: Narrow lanes defeat large machines, and a loan to start a business shifts the risk onto the worker.

Mechanisation addresses the infrastructure and rehabilitation addresses the worker. Neither touches the caste order that keeps supplying the labour.

Decode

Two demands: reasons for persistence, then an evaluation of the present approach.

Implicit demand

Prohibition failed because the demand for the work and the supply of workers were both untouched.

Architecture

The gap between law and practice → why it persists → the present approach → verdict.

Articulation

Anchor: the 1993 and 2013 Acts, sewer deaths, contracting out, NAMASTE. Money line: neither mechanisation nor rehabilitation touches the caste order that supplies the labour.

The law

The 1993 Act banned dry latrines and the employment of manual scavengers.

The 2013 Act widened the definition to include hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.

It requires protective equipment and makes hazardous entry an offence.

Safai Karamchari Andolan, 2014 directed compensation of ten lakh rupees for a sewer death.

In 2023 the Supreme Court raised that to thirty lakh rupees, with graded amounts for disability.

The National Commission for Safai Karamcharis monitors implementation and records deaths.

Why it persists

Prosecutions under the 2013 Act are rare, and convictions rarer still.

Contract labour lets a municipality deny that it employed the worker who died.

Sanitation workers often lack permanent employment, so refusing unsafe work costs them the job.

Faecal sludge management is weak, so tanks must be emptied manually in many towns.

Social stigma restricts mobility into other occupations even after training.

Since an admitted case creates an obligation, surveys undercount, and the law is applied to a population that officially does not exist.

The way forward

NAMASTE replaced the earlier self employment rehabilitation scheme in 2022.

Emergency response sanitation units give towns trained teams with equipment.

Machines need design for narrow lanes and shallow drains, not only large sewers.

Liability should rest on the authority that owns the drain, not on the contractor alone.

Rehabilitation works better as assured employment than as a loan to start a business.

Health cover and education support for the family address the intergenerational part of the problem.

Machines remove the need to enter, and profiling gives a worker an identity that the earlier schemes never established.

The National Education Policy (NEP), 2020 called foundational literacy the most urgent priority in school education. NIPUN Bharat, the mission for proficiency in reading and numeracy, set a deadline. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) still finds most class three children cannot read a class two text.

Why it has not been achieved

The curriculum outruns the child: Teaching follows the grade rather than the level, so a child who falls behind never catches up.

Teacher time goes elsewhere: Multigrade classrooms, vacancies and non teaching duties leave little room for individual attention.

School speaks a different language: A first generation learner must decode an unfamiliar tongue before she can begin to read.

The pandemic reversed a decade: School closure pushed reading levels back to where they stood ten years earlier.

Systems count enrolment: Schools are judged on admission and infrastructure, so nobody answers for whether a child can read.

How adequate is the present approach

The goal is right and measurable: NIPUN Bharat sets a clear target with defined learning outcomes, which earlier programmes never did.

Teacher preparation is thin: Training comes through a cascade of short modules, which rarely changes what happens in class.

What works is already known: Teaching children at their level rather than their grade has raised reading in several states.

The diagnosis in the policy is correct, while the theory of change is thin. A target without teacher time, level based teaching and the home language will not be met.

Decode

Two demands: why it has not happened, then whether the present approach is adequate.

Implicit demand

Adequacy must be judged against the causes named, not against the intention.

Architecture

The goal and the evidence → why it is unachieved → adequacy of the approach → verdict.

Articulation

Anchor: NEP 2020, NIPUN Bharat, ASER reading levels, multigrade classrooms, teaching at the right level. Money line: the diagnosis is correct and the theory of change is thin.

The evidence

ASER 2022 found reading levels had fallen to where they stood a decade earlier.

The National Achievement Survey records the same weakness in early grade numeracy.

NIPUN Bharat, launched in 2021, set universal foundational learning by class three as the goal.

NEP 2020 proposed a five year foundational stage covering ages three to eight.

Balvatika adds a preparatory year before class one.

Poshan bhi Padhai bhi, from 2023, brings early learning into the anganwadi.

Why the gap persists

Automatic promotion without remedial teaching was the weakness in the earlier no detention rule.

Teacher vacancies remain large, and single teacher schools are common in small habitations.

Teachers are deployed for elections, surveys and midday meal administration.

Instruction in a language the child does not speak at home slows decoding.

Private tuition fills the gap for those who can pay, which widens the divide.

Learning loss after the pandemic fell hardest on first generation learners.

Anganwadis were designed around food and health, so the learning years before class one were largely unused.

What would improve it

Teaching at the Right Level groups children by ability rather than by grade.

Dedicated early grade teachers, trained for reading instruction rather than for subjects.

Assessment designed for the teacher's use, with quick diagnostic tools.

Mother tongue instruction in the early years, with a planned transition.

Protect teaching time by law, limiting non teaching duties.

Strengthen the anganwadi to school continuum, so the preparatory year actually teaches.

Data is collected to show progress rather than to group children by level and teach them accordingly.