The Government of India, the Government of West Bengal, and the World Bank have signed an IBRD loan agreement for $125 million to support initiatives in West Bengal to enable poor and vulnerable groups to gain access to social protection programs.
West Bengal has about 400 programs that provide social aid, health care, and employment. The majority of these services are provided by Jai Bangla, an umbrella platform. The West Bengal Building State Capability for Inclusive Social Protection Project will support these interventions at the state level, with a special focus on vulnerable groups like women, tribal and scheduled caste households, the elderly, and those living in the state’s disaster-prone coastal regions.
“The COVID-19 epidemic has emphasized the necessity for seamless systems to give inclusive and equitable social protection in times of crisis,” according to the Ministry of Finance’s Department of Economic Affairs. This project will focus on strengthening the state government’s ability to extend coverage and access to social assistance and targeted services for the state’s poor and vulnerable populations.”
On behalf of the Indian government, Shri Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance; Shri Sudip Kumar Sinha, Secretary, Finance Department, Government of West Bengal; and Mr. Junaid Ahmad, Country Director, India, World Bank signed the agreement.
According to a recent poll, while food and in-kind transfers reach the majority of West Bengal’s poor and vulnerable households, cash transfers have a limited reach. The aged, widows and crippled have limited access to social pensions due to lengthy application processes and a lack of automated methods for application and eligibility verification.
The project will help increase the state’s ability to expand coverage and access to social assistance, as well as distribute cash transfers to the poor and vulnerable, over the next four years, thanks to a consolidated social register.
Manual data entry, inconsistent beneficiary data across agencies, and a lack of data storage and data interchange procedures are all issues that West Bengal is dealing with. The project would help the state’s unified delivery system, the Jai Bangla platform, automate fragmented social assistance programs and accelerate the delivery of social pensions to vulnerable and disadvantaged households.
The project will also fund the establishment of a teleconsultation network for social care services, as well as a cadre of case management workers who can provide guidance on eldercare and connect homes to health services and facilities. It will also establish an institutional platform to increase the coordination and efficacy of government activities aimed at increasing women’s involvement in the workforce in the state.