January 28th, 2025 – GS4

In a particular state, the government has recently started digital transfer of payments for all the welfare schemes. There is a push for the digitalisation of the records, documents and the accounts of the beneficiaries. To achieve this, specific deadlines for the digitalisation of each scheme has been set which resulted in extra pressure on local administration. 

Digitalisation is resulting in elimination of fake beneficiaries and middlemen which is leading to cost savings to the government. It is also leading to the elimination of corruption in different departments. 

You are a Block Development Officer of a block where digitalisation has just completed. One day, when you were conducting the public hearing, hundreds of people from your block came to you with many issues. Many elderly and widow women were unable to get their pensions. Women were unable to get subsidies and wages under different schemes while children were unable to receive scholarships leading to their schools giving them the deadlines to submit their fees or risking their admissions getting canceled. Among them were also the parents of a child who died due to hunger as the PDS shop denied them ration due to delays in aadhar authentication. 

All of them complained that their payments used to be on time before digitalisation. But after digitalisation they were facing issues of the non-linking of Aadhar with the bank, aadhar being inactive or other terminologies which rural people were unable to understand. Others complained of de-registration of their names from the schemes due to aadhar not being linked despite the documents being submitted on time.
As per various newspaper reports, similar complaints are coming from other blocks and districts as well across the state. 

1. In such cases of public hearings, what is your criteria regarding the sequence in which you should attend the complaints of people knowing fully well that you have limited time due to other obligations of the service?

2. What are the ethical issues involved in the given case?

3. What steps should be taken by the government to ensure that genuine beneficiaries are not denied benefits in pursuit of rapid digitalisation?