Post Offices, Pensions and Computers: New Opportunities for Combining Growth and Social Protection in Weakly Integrated Rural Areas?

This paper examines the Indian social protection measures that are targeted at poor people and the constraints to their implementation in areas weakly integrated into economic institutions and infrastructure. The paper locates this discussion within the prospects for enhanced automation offered by computerization.

The paper reviews the complexities of targeting and delivery in India, and examines:

• The trend towards an increasing number of government schemes transferring resources to the poor;
• The manner in which these are affected differently by misappropriation.

The paper argues that over-elaborate targeting militates against local transparency and gives local officials too much discretion, and so is part of the problem.

The paper suggests that:

• Cash transfers, paid through certain channels (e.g. the post office) for specific purposes such as pension and allowances, are less corruptible than many in kind transfers;
• These methods merit greatly increased funding since they may help in reducing under-nutrition and in stimulating the local food economy by reducing "demand deficits".

The paper concludes by:

• Recommending simplicity of targeting and automation of delivery;
• Suggesting that it might be better to identify delivery systems that work and design schemes around them, rather than design schemes incorporating the latest concepts of poverty reduction and targeting, which then prove problematic in delivery.