Welfare and politics: PM Modi makes 2024 poll pitch with four schemes

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spoken about the importance he gives to Vishwakarma and Svanidhi, two schemes the government is banking on to help India’s informal workforce. The schemes for rural artisans and urban street vendors run alongside Ujjwala, which supplies subsidised cooking gas, and PM Kisan, which gives cash support to farmers, are significant in this election year.

The schemes—Modi promotes them as examples of his commitment to the poor—address four distinct bands of voters: artisans, street vendors, women in rural households, and farmers. For the BJP, these schemes can create a significant differentiator in the results for the general elections next year. All of them provide cash support and are linked to the employment and business performance of these economic groups. They are seen as robust alternatives to the "freebies" that Modi has often derided Opposition parties for offering voters.

PM Kisan costs about Rs 75,000 crore annually and the combined yearly bill for Ujjwala and Svanidhi is less than Rs 12,000 crore. The number of people the schemes reach is enormous and this is what makes them attractive for the BJP to brandish.

Contrasting outcomes

Vishwakarma, which is in the works, and Svanidhi provide working capital loans at soft rates. Vishwakarma is meant for artisans, typically in rural areas, of deprived economic groups including SC, ST, minorities and women, and provides skill certification too.

Svanidhi provides cash support in the form of affordable capital loans to urban vendors to expand business. According to its website and ground reports, the scheme has reached some 4 million vendors in three years. It was an emergency that shaped its success. The migration from India cities as Covid-19 spread in 2020 prompted municipal authorities to register street vendors under the scheme and resume their livelihoods after lockdowns to contain the disease were eased.

PM Vishwakarma Kaushal Samman, Vishwakarma or PM Vikas for short, didn’t have any emergency use and is at the risk of slipping in a bureaucratic maze. The scheme, announced in this year’s Budget, supports artisans and crafts persons. At a seminar after the Budget in February, Modi said artisans such as carpenters, ironsmiths, sculptors and masons must get a chance to improve their skills. Since then he has at least on three occasions spoken about its potential but the scheme is not operational yet. There is no government website for Vishwakarma, unlike Svanidhi, Ujjwala or PM Kisan.

The first challenge is identifying artisans. While Svanidhi had municipal authorities assisting vendors on city streets with identification, the Vishwakarma scheme is meant for predominantly rural areas where such work is not possible. While gram panchayats could do the job of identification, they are not part of the scheme and come under the administrative supervision of the rural development ministry.

The Ministry of Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise, which is in charge of the scheme, has a thin infrastructure to enumerate artisans. It has now roped in the Small Industries Development Bank of India to digitally count those who should benefit. “This is laudable, but it would have been better to rope in the self-help groups and micro finance institutions, who have their ear to the ground,” said a government official.

The other challenge is to rope in the skill development ministry to offer a viable skills certificate for the artisans. This ministry claims that between FY20 and FY23 (as of January 5), 1.6 million people have been trained. Of them 69 per cent are from rural areas and 81 per cent of the trainees are women. But these numbers do not map how many of them are artisans with some sort of knowledge of any craft. Those data need to be seeded.

The expectation is that after Modi’s renewed emphasis, work on Vishwakarma shall pick up. As of now, the scheme does not have a fund allocation. It is possible that the Scheme for Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries (SFURTI), running since FY15, could be merged with Vishwakarma soon. SFURTI was allotted Rs 280 crore for FY24, but the MSME ministry may have to wean it off to promote Vishwakarma.

Svanidhi scheme, on the other hand, has already given Rs 5,795 crore to street vendors. An individual gets Rs 10,000 as the first loan, which can then go up to Rs 50,000 for the third.

Ujjwala and PM Kisan

The Ujjwala scheme provides LPG, a clean cooking fuel, to rural and deprived households otherwise dependent on firewood, coal or cow-dung cakes. “Usage of these cooking fuels had detrimental impacts on the health of rural women as well as on the environment”, noted a government release when the scheme was introduced in May 2016.

The government, in March this year, extended by one more year the scheme that offers a subsidy of Rs 200 per cylinder. The website of the scheme said that till now eight crore LPG connections have been released. Despite leakages, Ujjwala has the potential to help nearly 24 crore Indians. The popularity of the scheme has since been impacted as the price of LPG has risen and a subsidy being offered with it, has been discontinued. There has been several media reports that those who got the connections have subsequently dropped out.

Yet the oil marketing companies are emphatic that the scheme has pushed LPG coverage from 62 percent of all households in the country as on 1st May 2016 to 99.8 percent as on 1st April 2021.

In FY23 Ujjwala cost the centre Rs 6,100 crore. Even after the extension the bill will be a manageable Rs 7,680 crore in FY24.

In comparison, the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana is fatter. All small and marginal farmers are supposed to get up to Rs 6,000 per year as minimum income support in three equal installments. This 75,000-crore scheme aims to cover 125 million farmers, irrespective of the size of their landholding in India.

This too has a robust website. The homepage offers a section called the 'Farmers Corner'. Farmers can register themselves through this link. They can also edit their name in the PM Kisan database and know the status of their payment. In June, agriculture minister Narendra Singh Tomar rolled out a mobile app with a face authentication feature.

The app hopes to resolve difficulties related to Aadhaar verification and updating bank account details on the PM Kisan Portal. Through the app, farmers will be able to complete an electronic ‘know your customer’ (e-KYC) process by scanning their face, eliminating the need for one time passwords or fingerprint verification. Tomar said the app can be used to assist up to 100 other farmers in completing their e-KYC from home. The government has extended the e-KYC ability to state government officers, enabling them to complete the process for up to 500 farmers.

A cabinet decision of March to extend the term of Ujjwala and the ministry’s decision to build more functionality into PM Kisan in June show the government will continue to woo farmers.