Getting Ready for the Welfare Schemes

 

Any information about the Tamil Nadu Govt welfare schemes arrives and travels like lightning in this part of the world. I am sure it is the same in most other parts of the state.  And every time it travels, it gets added some information with every link – as expected

Recently two schemes raging are:

•     The Pongal 2023 gift by the government in cash and kind
•     The monthly Rs.1000 to the female heads of family, belonging to the lower income group

To my knowledge, the ration card is in no way linked to the aadhar or the bank account yet.

There is no information from the state government on either of the welfare schemes. Still the rumour is that, the cash from the state government will be given only if the aadhar is linked to the bank account - and that they need to take all the three – aadhar, ration card and the bank passbook to the ration shop to avail the cash gift.

A recent visit to the lone nationalised bank, catering to about 15 surrounding hamlets, left me flabbergasted at the sight of the crowd overflowing the bank premises. The bank staff were totally overwhelmed, catering to the requests to link the aadhar to the bank account.

This had been advised by the banks for some time now, not necessarily for the welfare gift – but as a directive from the central government. Some had already done it,  but why this sudden surge ?

The process goes like this :

•  The people bring the aadhar car and the bank passbook with the request.
•        The staff advise them to get a photo and a colour xerox of the aadhar.
•        The queue moves to these two shops.
•        After getting these two, get back to the bank
•        At this point some find out they have already completed this process and the aadhar is linked to the account
•        For the rest the linking process is done using bio-metric method of authentication.
•        If the person is too old and fingerprints have faded, the OTP is sent to the mobile attached to the aadhar.
•        If the person has the mobile in hand, the bank staff  get the phone and find out the OTP as most of them do not know how to retrieve or read the OTP.
•        If by any chance, the phone is not available in hand and is somewhere else, the bank staff try to contact the person who currently has the phone to get the OTP
•        If the mobile number is surrendered because due to age, the person is not able to hear AND the finger print is feeble – then God save him or her. Bank says , nothing can be done.  Cannot totally believe this though.
•        Then the people come to the bank everyday for the next week till they confirm the process is complete

The bank predicts this is going to continue till Pongal .

The more worrying thing seems to be, many seem to believe that they will not get the cash gift or the monthly amount if they have a balance in the bank. So they are drawing the money from the bank leaving the minimum balance in their account. Praying to God that the hard earned cash is safe with them, and is used for the purpose it was saved in the first place.

And hope the money coming from abroad is not impacted due to this

The taluka office some twenty kilometers from here is also swamped with women – women of all ages - all with a request to make them the “head of family” in the ration card . The information circulating round here being, the monthly amount of Rs.1000 is given to the women, only if they are the “head of family”. 

Rumour mill is strong and not wanting to be left behind is  equally strong