Advancing citizen welfare in Haryana through the novel “Mukhyamantri Antyodaya Parivar Utthan Yojana” Initiative

written by Aakash Sharma, CMGGA 2023 Yamunanagar

The Mukhyamantri Antyodaya Parivar Utthan Yojana (MMAPUY) is a scheme launched by the Government of Haryana in 2022. The objective of the scheme is to uplift the economic status of the poorest families (Antyodaya Families- families whose annual income is less than Rs. 1 lakh) in the state. These families were identified through an existing scheme “Parivar Pehchaan Patra’’ (PPP) a digital repository in the form of unique eight-digit IDs, providing accurate, authentic and verified data for all families in Haryana

Under the MMAPUY scheme, a package of offerings is being provided to the identified families.

As a Haryana CM’s Good Governance Associate, my goal through this article is to paint a detailed picture of the MMAPUY scheme implementation on the ground, stakeholders involved, challenges faced, solutions implemented to achieve significant pendency clearance in the Yamunanagar District of Haryana.

Scheme Mapping

The mind map below gives an overview of how the overall process of organising the MMAPUY event (Mela) looks from an administrative point of view. Melas are precursors to the scheme, crucial in the mapping of beneficiaries with scheme offerings, based on fitment.

Image 1: Utthan Mela at Block Saraswati Nagar, Yamunanagar

Image 2: Citizen at a counselling desk during Utthan Mela.

Case of Animal Husbandry Cattle Scheme

During these melas, the most famous and demanded scheme by the citizens is a scheme from Animal Husbandry, where the eligible citizen gets a subsidized loan to buy two buffaloes in 6 months. Using these cattle, Citizen can start a small business of selling milk. This scheme was very popular because of its high amount of subsidy (50% subsidy), less barrier of entry, and familiarity or ease of doing that particular business.

For our further understanding, we will focus on cases under the animal husbandry department and specifically, the kind of challenges the administration was facing while clearing these cases and how the solutions were crafted.

A case under the Animal Husbandry scheme goes through multiple stages and approvals. We will understand each stage, understand what challenges we faced, and how we solved them.

Different stages in the life cycle of the application in the MMAPUY scheme

Department Level

- Assessment of Application received by the Department to approve/reject based on eligibility:

After receiving the application, eligibility is rechecked, and necessary documents are asked from the citizen. On providing satisfactory documents like Aadhar, and PPP, the major reason for rejection at this stage is found to be a lack of correct documentation or non-submission of documents from the citizen end due to loss of interest.

- Forward approved application to banks:

- Complete and verified applications are then forwarded to the bank with documents like application, purchase documents, and insurance.

- The Animal Husbandry Department provides the subsidy amount (50% of the purchase amount) to the beneficiary once the loan is sanctioned.

- The Department also helps in submitting the purchase and insurance documents to the banks

Lifecycle of an application in the Animal Husbandry Department

Bank Level

Application forwarded to the bank: After receiving approved applications from the Animal Husbandry department along with the required supporting documents like Insurance and application, the bank checks the CIBIL score of the applicant. If the CIBIL score is significantly low, only then are these cases rejected by the bank.

- A major challenge faced in this step is a lack of collaboration between the bank and the Animal Husbandry Department.

- The application submitted by Animal Husbandry to the Banks started getting lost or the applications were not reaching the banks. And because of the frequent transfers of bank managers, the loss of context increased.

- From CMGGA’s ground understanding, we made efforts to ensure that the applications are sent to the banks in physical form and digital form. The signed statement is also collected from the banks to ensure transparency and accountability.

Sanctioning the loan: Post approving the applicant for the loan, the sanctioning step required to be done after receiving a purchase document from Animal Husbandry and post-visit by the bank employee to the home of the applicant to identify that they have enough space to keep two cattle.

- Major delay identified in sanctioning due to the following reasons

- Shortage of staff in banks to address such a large number of visits and documentation.

- Lack of motivation from banks due to a significant amount of paperwork similar for all loans (irrespective of amount) and less incentive to prioritize it.

Disbursal of loans: Post-sanctioning of the loan, the loan needs to be disbursed from the bank in the account of the seller, who sold his/her buffalo to the applicant. This gets delayed mostly due to lack of purchase documentation, the bottleneck at Banks, citizen non-availability/reachability or citizen’s loss of interest in the scheme.

Major challenges in case clearance once applications are received:

- Lack of Bank-department coordination in exchanging required documents and communication

- Lack of motivation from banks’ side due to fear of loan getting converted to a Non-performing asset

- Not interested Beneficiary due to loss of interest in the scheme or a change in mind for other reasons including the long timeline and a lack of support from banks.

- Beneficiary availability: Sometimes it is hard to reach the beneficiary as they keep changing their mobile/phone number. And as most of the beneficiaries are labourers, it is hard for them to come to the bank again and again by giving up on their daily livelihood.

- Tech challenges in clearing cases with complexities.

What worked in Yamunanagar?

Despite a large population to address and manage a large number of applications during the scheme implementation on the ground, Yamunanagar did exceptionally well in benefit distribution and clearing pendency at each level. Out of 3,692 approved applications in Yamunanagar 3,212 (87 %) got the benefits, Haryana state average is 58%. Out of 3,212 beneficiaries, 2,912 got a loan from the bank and the remaining 300 applicants got benefits from the department in the form of wage employment, training and honorarium.

On 26 Nov, Yamunanagar had to address 2,756 applications. The pendency clearance target from the state was to clear 1,378 (50%) of the total pendency. By 26 Jan, with regular efforts from the administration and rigorous monitoring, Yamunanagar achieved 80% pendency clearance (2,204 cases resolved) while overall state-level pendency clearance was 28%.

To achieve this, multiple measures were taken by the administration to achieve maximum clearance. The steps taken by the administration are as follows:

Monitoring and Review

a. Rigorous review of banks and department

- Fortnightly district-level review of banks and departments in District Mini-Secretariat. These reviews were chaired by Additional Deputy Commissioner, Lead District Manager, CMGGA.

- Regular reviews at LDM(Lead District Manager- Manager of the Lead Bank of the district) office, of the highest pendency banks. This review used to be headed mostly by CMGGA and LDM himself. Every bank manager is questioned on the reason behind the pendency, what the current status is, whether there is any challenge that they are facing, and solving those issues (elaborated upon earlier) by directing and establishing coordination between LDM, ADC office staff, Departments, and banks.

- Nudges to Regional Managers of banks to further nudge their bank managers to fast-track the clearance of cases.

b. Personal visits:

- As the CMGGA deployed in Yamunanagar, I also conducted regular visits to the departments and banks with high pendency.

- During these visits, I was able to understand banks’ perspectives and challenges.

- Discussion on case-to-case pendencies and discussion with applicants in person or over call to understand the issue.

- Then take suitable data from the Bank manager to clear the pendency and ask for a report.

- These visits and insights increased accountability and helped build a strong relationship with bank employees.

- If there were any department-level issues, I used to call up the department head to address the bank issues and solve them on priority.

- If there were any administrative, process, or tech-related issues, I used to note down all suggestions and share them with the CMGGA state team and at the district administration office.

Use of data and case-level details

• All the reviews were highly data-driven.
• All the activity in the MMAPUY scheme, be it approval, rejection, reassigning, and status of sanctioned loan and disbursement is recorded through the MMAPUY web portal, where all the above-mentioned stakeholders have their respective login. They update the case status, and all this gets accumulated in the form of well-tailored Excel sheets. This data is then further analysed using Excel and helps the administration in identifying and bringing its focus on specific stakeholders, regions, and the processes that need to be simplified or addressed.

Authority involvement: ADC Yamunanagar was highly involved in the execution of this scheme in Yamunanagar, Additional Deputy Commissioner, Yamunanagar. Because of his personal involvement and holding on to the scheme, we were able to set up high accountability in banks and departments during meetings and reviews.

Image 3: District level review of all bank managers and department heads chaired by ADC Yamunanagar along with CMGGA and LDM

Image 4: Open discussion with Animal Husbandry department to understand their challenges and take suggestions for scheme improvement

Images 5,6: CMGGA team along with Veterinary Surgeon Block Bilaspur visiting a beneficiary home to understand their experience during availing the scheme.

Role of CMGGA

As a CMGGA, I was involved throughout the process from Aanganwadi visits to potential families’ homes to disbursal of the loan amount to the beneficiary from the bank.

• The major role played by me as a CMGGA is ensuring the implementation quality, solving ground-level challenges, and bringing coordination between different stakeholders
• Conducting regular reviews of departments and banks.
• Visiting banks and beneficiaries to understand ground-level challenges faced by them.
• MMAPUY scheme improvement suggestions to the state team as per the ground observation and suggestions from the stakeholders.

Stakeholders involved in making this scheme successful from citizen onboarding to service delivery are:

- Additional Deputy Commissioner (ADC) office for monitoring and administrative execution

- Banks like SBI, PNB, and other private banks (HDFC, AXIS, Sarva Haryana Grameen Bank)

- Lead District Manager office of Lead Bank (A lead bank is a bank that is assigned to a specific district and coordinates the efforts of other credit institutions in that district. The lead bank’s role is to increase credit flow to agriculture, small-scale industries, and other economic activities. The lead bank also works to expand branch banking facilities and meet the credit needs of the rural economy)

- All the Heads of Departments of 19 departments for explaining schemes to citizens and the counselling team and registering citizens

- Women and Child Development for Mobilization

- Panchayati Raj for arrangements execution of MMAPUY event, to bring banks, departments administration and citizens on a common platform (mela)

Supported by Ashoka University, the Chief Minister’s Good Governance Associate (CMGGA) program provides a novel platform for the socially minded youth of India to transform governance and improve citizen lives in the state of Haryana. In the case of MMAPUY, associates dedicated their efforts towards solving, assisting, monitoring, quality management, reporting to authorities, and removing bottlenecks across the process from the day of Mela’s Announcement to loan disbursal.

MMAPUY is one of the more prominent schemes by the Government of Haryana, the current CMGGA cohort has largely contributed towards, with a program associate, one in every district, supporting the Departments and mobilizing the local stakeholders to help improve the scheme’s outcomes.