On Prime Minister’s Claims about the COVID-19 Relief Package

Prime Minister Modi was on the TV screens once again yesterday which marked the last day of the third month after his sudden announcement of lockdown at the end of March. This lockdown has plunged the entire economy into a crisis and has left people scrambling for whatever means of survival they could find. Unemployment has increased to unprecedented levels and, as a result of widespread loss of incomes, a vast proportion of the population has been subjected to food insecurity.

In his speech yesterday, PM Modi made several claims about the relief programmes of the government over the last three months. There is no denying that whatever assistance reached the people during these trying times would have brought some relief. However, true to his image, the Prime Minister vastly overstated what the government has done to bring relief to the people and the scale of assistance provided during the last three months.

We would like to discuss the reality of three main claims made by the Prime Minister.

Claim 1: The PM claimed that Rs. 31,000 crores had been transferred to 20 crore beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PM-JDY).

The cash assistance provided through this component of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana was meager and covered only a small section of the informal workers who lost their livelihoods because of the lockdown. Under this component of the relief package, the Government provided a cash assistance of just Rs.500 per month and that too only to women beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana. And a vast majority of poor and vulnerable people do not have PM-JDY accounts. Even among those who have bank accounts, a vast majority have other kinds of bank accounts including regular savings accounts. Among those who have PM-JDY accounts, about half (18 crore out of 39 crore) are men. None of these people were eligible for the assistance.

Various reports have suggested that beneficiaries of these transfers faced problems in getting access to the money that was transferred to their accounts.This is seen clearly in Figure 1 which shows that the total balance in PMJDY increased sharply on account of these transfers, and a substantial part of this money remained unused in these accounts.

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