That’s the hope. If things go on as they are today, it could badly backfire. Despite the fact that LPG is distributed country-wide by 3 central government-owned PSUs and most banks are owned by the government, the first phase of the direct benefits transfer (DBT) in LPG hasn’t been too successful. In the first 6 weeks after its launch in 18 districts on June 1, DBT in LPG has been able to complete just 2.28 million transactions covering only 1.25 million LPG households who got a total of R91 crore—this is against the target of covering 7.56 million households. The reason for the failure is also known. Another review meeting of DBT last month found that public sector banks were not too keen to open bank accounts for DBT payments as they earned nothing from it—not having enough money to incentivise banks to open accounts is clearly a critical flaw in the project design. The government would do well to fix this quickly, otherwise it will give Modi another reason to scoff at it.
Caste in a different mould