Opening an account in this scheme of Modi government, there will be big income every month
An important miss, which will not cost any money, but will be a huge relief to the poor is to stop Aadhaar-based biometric authentication at the time of lifting their grain. It is a source of exclusion and has been shown to have no impact on improving the functioning of the PDS. Aadhaar attendance was stopped for central government employees about two weeks back (due to risk of community transmission). Why not for PDS beneficiaries?
For organised sector workers, Sitharaman announced that the government will pay the employee provident fund (EPF) contribution of both the employer and employee for the next three months. This will be applicable for all entities that have upto 100 employees, and 90 per cent of whose employees earn less than 15,000 per month.
Hence, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana account can be termed among best investment plan for a girl child. If you are planning to make an investment in this plan, than choose your investment amount wisely in order to avail best benefit.
It will not be easy, but it is feasible. The system is in place, it is a matter of scaling up the distribution. One problem is that the private dealers who are running PDS shops in many states may try to take advantage of the confusion to siphon off some of the extra rations. To avoid this, it is extremely important to ensure that people are clear about the new entitlements. Distribution will have to be tightly supervised. Further, strict action will have to be taken against corrupt dealers, instead of treating them with kid gloves as normally happens. All the anti-corruption safeguards will need to be tightened.
I did not exactly expect something higher, but I was hoping for it. The Central government’s contribution to social security pensions has stagnated at a measly Rs 200 per month since 2006. This is shocking, and the relief package was an opportunity to repair this injustice. Pensions should have been raised to Rs 1000 per month at least, on a permanent basis. Instead, pensioners are getting a one-off grant of Rs 1,000. This is very stingy.
If you invest Rs 5,000 per month for 14 years, then you have deposited about Rs 8.40 lakh and is in better position to earn about Rs 27.10 lakh.
The government will also ask states to use the construction fund, with a corpus of Rs 31,000 crore, for the benefit of the 3.5 crore registered workers to protect them from the fallout of the economic disruption. Other steps include doubling of the collateral-free loans available to self-help groups under the National Rural Livelihood Mission, to Rs 20 lakh from Rs 10 lakh.
Providing 10 kg per person per month (instead of 5 kg/person per month) for the coming three months will be a huge relief to the two-thirds of the population who are entitled to PDS grain under the National Food Security Act (NFSA). The government is dealing with a situation of excess stocks, with the next procurement season upon them at the moment. I think the logistics can be managed if the government allows the movement of trucks for these commodities, which they are supposed to do – this needs to be communicated better.
The package also includes insurance of Rs 50 lakh for all the healthcare workers who are involved in combating the disease which is very useful given the uncertainty of the disease and its impact. There are other announcements concerning reaching out to women, elderly, destitute etc, which will work to alleviate their suffering. The “Kisan” scheme in the Budget that gave Rs 6,000 per annum to farmers would be released with the first tranche of Rs 2000, is not an additional allocation but a frontloading of an already existing scheme.
