Social Security — A Caring Government, Passionate Society. India has always been a caring society. The social security schemes of the Governments have to be made more meaningful… strengthen the Pension and Health Insurance safety nets for all kinds of labourers.

The 2014 manifesto opens its social security section with a sentiment and then a task: "India has always been a caring society. The social security schemes of the Governments have to be made more meaningful." Alongside it sits a specific undertaking — to "strengthen the Pension and Health Insurance safety nets for all kinds of labourers."

Part of the response was to build new things. The three Jan Suraksha schemes — Atal Pension Yojana and the two ₹2 lakh insurance covers — launched in May 2015 and enrol very large numbers. This fact-check does not dispute that, and does not assess them, because they have not been audited in this form.

The scheme that has been audited is the one that was already there, and it is the one that pays money directly to India's poorest old, widowed and disabled citizens. The National Social Assistance Programme dates to 1995 and rests on Article 41 of the Constitution. The CAG's all-India performance audit of it, tabled on 8 August 2023, covers 2017-18 to 2020-21 and checked 179 districts, 699 gram panchayats and 8,461 beneficiaries.

Its most fundamental finding concerns who the scheme reaches. It is designed for universal coverage through proactive identification — the state is supposed to find eligible people. In practice, the audit says, "NSAP is being implemented in demand-driven mode as the benefits were provided to only those beneficiaries who applied for it", so "the eligible beneficiaries who were unaware/lack resources to apply for the benefits were left out". Some states did not even fill the beneficiary cap the ministry had set for them. And the list being used to decide eligibility is stale: beneficiaries "are being selected from BPL list even after finalisation of SECC data even though these BPL lists are not being regularly updated."

For a pension, timing is the benefit. Here the audit found the programme barely functioning as a pension at all: "Only 11 States/UTs disbursed monthly pensions as envisaged in NSAP guidelines. Four States were making quarterly pension payment whereas two States were making annual pension payment. 17 States/UTs… paid pension on ad-hoc basis." An old age pension paid once a year is not the same instrument as one paid every month.

The eligibility failures ran in both directions, which is the worst combination. Money went to people who did not qualify: ₹30.47 crore of old age pension "paid to 57,394 ineligible persons who were less than 60 years of age"; ₹26.45 crore of widow pension to 38,540 people under 40, and ₹0.57 crore "to 414 persons other than widows, including male family-members"; ₹15.11 crore of disability pension to 21,322 people "whose disability was either below 80 per cent or could not be ascertained". Payments continued after death in 26 states and union territories — ₹2 crore for 2,103 people — and 2,243 people in 14 states drew more than one pension.

At the same time, the people who did qualify were underpaid. Because the enhanced rate for those above 80 was not applied, "short payment of pension of ₹42.85 crore to 2,43,286 persons in 15 States/UTs" was found. Because pension did not begin from the effective date, another ₹61.71 crore was short-paid to 92,602 people. Both of those are amounts owed to some of the poorest people in the country and not given to them.

Money meant to close the awareness gap went elsewhere. ₹2.83 crore earmarked for informing people about NSAP "were diverted for campaigning of other schemes", and ₹57.45 crore was diverted to other purposes in six states — while ₹18.78 crore sat idle for one to five years in eight others. And one component simply did not run: the National Family Benefit Scheme, the one-time payment when a family loses its breadwinner, "was not being implemented in many States/UTs".

The manifesto asked for existing social security schemes to be made more meaningful. On the one such scheme the CAG has examined across this period, the audited record is of a programme that finds few of the people it is for, pays them irregularly, pays some who should not be paid, and underpays those who should. New schemes were added alongside it. Our verdict is lacks context.