ISB-Digital identity Research Initiative | 2019
The linking of Aadhaar to the MGNREGA wage payment process alters the payment process by routing payments to worker beneficiaries through the Aadhaar Payments Bridge (APB) system, and into the beneficiary’s Aadhaar-seeded account. In contrast, beneficiaries without Aadhaar-linkage continue to receive wages in their MGNREGA linked account, which may or may not be Aadhaar-seeded. This study analyses patterns of payment duration and rejections for Aadhaar-linked and non-Aadhaar wage transactions in Lohardaga district, Jharkhand from April 2017 to March 2018.
We utilize wage payment transaction data from MGNREGA Fund Transfer Orders and Muster Rolls to compare payment durations and rejections across Aadhaar-linked and non-Aadhaar transactions. We examine the payment duration in 2 parts – the first comprising steps executed within the Gram Panchayat, and the second comprising those executed at the Centre (Ministry of Rural Development), PFMS, NPCI and APBS.
We find that at the district level, 39.8% of Aadhaar-linked transactions and 40.6% of non-Aadhaar transactions are delayed. We find that on average, the duration beyond the GP (which involves APBS) is longer than the duration within the GP in all but 5 of the 66 Panchayats in the district. This finding is consistent across Aadhaar-linked and non-Aadhaar transactions. Finally, we find that at the district level that the proportion of Aadhaar-linked transactions that were rejected (2.64%) is nearly identical to that of all non-Aadhaar transactions (2.65%).
Ashwini Chhatre is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and currently serves as the Executive Director of the Bharti Institute of Public Policy (BIPP) at the Indian School of Business (ISB). Professor Chhatre is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests broadly centre on the dynamic cross-scale interactions between governance, economic development, and environmental protection. He relocated to India from the US in 2014 to join the faculty at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad. He spent 13 years in the US, including five in graduate school at Duke University, where he was awarded a PhD in Political Science. In 2006-07, Professor Chhatre became the first Giorgio Ruffolo Post-doctoral Fellow in Sustainability Science at Harvard University, before joining the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Between completing his BA in Economics from the University of Delhi in 1990 and starting his PhD at Duke University, he spent 11 years working in different parts of India, primarily as a community organiser and social activist on issues related to natural resources such as land, forests, and water. A background in Economics, graduate training in Political Science, and a long-standing engagement with scholarship in Geography, Anthropology, Landscape Ecology, and Environmental History ensure that his research is never confined to a single discipline.
Professor Chhatre’s main research interests lie in exploring the intersection of democracy, environment, and development, with a focus on decentralised forest governance, climate change vulnerability and adaptation, and multifunctional agriculture. Over the past 20 years, the scope of his research projects has ranged from household-level to global analysis, consistently bridging research, policy, and practice.
He was the founding Editor-in-Chief of World Development Perspectives (2016-19), served as Senior Editor of Conservation Letters (2009-2014), and has published one book and several articles in leading journals including Science, and PNAS.
