According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Social Security is a comprehensive approach with an aim:
To prevent deprivation,
To give assurance to the individual of a basic minimum income for himself and his dependents,
Also, to protect the individual from any uncertainty.
Social welfare systems provide assistance to individuals and families through programs; such as health care, food stamps, unemployment compensation, housing assistance, etc.
Giving such protection to every individual in the country is called Universal Social Welfare.
What is Universal Social Welfare / Social Security?
According to the International Labour Organisation, Social security is the protection that society provides to individuals and households:
To ensure access to health care and to guarantee income security; particularly in cases of old age, unemployment, sickness, invalidity, etc.
Giving such protection to every individual in the country is called Universal Social Welfare.
Schemes and Initiatives for Social Welfare in India
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA): It guarantees 100 days of work a year to every rural household with an aim to enhance the livelihood security of people.
National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP): The program extends social assistance to poor households. It covers the aged, widows, disabled, and families where the breadwinner has passed away.
Integrated Child Development Services: It is a government program in India that provides food, preschool education, primary healthcare, cash transfers to families, etc. It covers children under 6 years of age and their mothers.
Ayushman Bharat – Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY): It provides insurance up to Rs 5 lakh per family per year for in-patient secondary and tertiary treatment. It coves over 100 million vulnerable families, which is about 500 million people.
Need of Universal Social Welfare
Vulnerability of masses: The pandemic has enhanced the vulnerability of masses as:
It has pushed an estimated 75 million people into poverty.
The second wave has shown even money is not enough to access health care services. It has brought even the middle and upper-class citizens to their knees.
Poor performance of Social Welfare schemes: The country has over 500 direct benefit transfer schemes. However, many schemes weren’t able to get desired benefits during the pandemic.
The schemes are fractionalised across various departments and sub-schemes. This causes problems in every stage from data collection to last-mile delivery.
Better results: India’s Pulse Polio Universal Immunisation Program helped it to become polio-free in 2014. This shows the country has the potential to run universal programs and achieve better results.
Nature of Indian workforce: More than 90% of the workforce is in the unorganized sector thereby depriving them of job security, labour rights, and post-retirement provisions.
Avoiding Inclusion/Exclusion errors: Universal system will encompass every individual and household in the country thereby tackling the problem of inclusion/exclusion.
Improved Living Standard: Access to education, maternity benefits, disability benefits, etc. social benefits would ensure a better standard of living for the people.
Challenges in adopting Universal Social Welfare
Financial Burden: Overall public expenditure on social protection (excluding public healthcare) is only approx. 1.5% of the GDP, lower than many middle-income countries across the world. However, huge sums of money would be required to universalize social welfare.
One Size Approach: Universal Social Welfare may be built on a unified approach that may deliver sub-optimum results. This would happen as political economy, labor markets, demographic attributes, and risk profiles vary by location.
Unequal Degree of Infrastructure across the country: The idea of USW requires each and every village to have decent electricity and optic fibre network for smooth dissemination of data.
Leakages and Corruption in Governance: India has slipped to 86th position in Transparency International (TI)’s Corruption Perception Index 2020. A high degree of corruption may result in a higher cost for USW and the exclusion of genuine beneficiaries.
Suggestions to implement Universal Social Welfare
The government should map the State and Central schemes in a consolidated manner. This would avoid duplication, inclusion, and exclusion errors in delivering welfare services.
It already consolidates the public distribution system (PDS), the provision of gas cylinders, and wages for the MGNREGA.
Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PMJAY) should be converted into a universal healthcare scheme i.e. available to all and at every level of healthcare.
It must compute the costs of delivering universal social services. Post computation, robust steps must be taken to arrange the requisite amount.
The country can learn from successful global models like Ireland’s Poor Law System.
The system was introduced in the 19th century to provide relief to the masses. It was financed by local property taxes.
The system was built keeping in mind the future economic crisis and dignity of the masses.
It has now evolved into a four-fold apparatus. It promises social insurance, social assistance, universal schemes, and extra benefits/supplements.
There must be a focus on data digitization, data-driven decision-making, and collaboration across government departments. This would improve the implementation potential.
Universal social protection architecture should give respect to decentralization. Under this, the higher-level government should allow local governments to design, plan and deliver a core basket of benefits within a nationally defined policy framework and budget.
Need of Universal Social Welfare:
Vulnerability of masses: The pandemic has enhanced the vulnerability of masses as:
It has pushed an estimated 75 million people into poverty.
The second wave has shown even money is not enough to access health care services. It has brought even the middle and upper-class citizens to their knees.
The schemes are fractionalized across various departments and sub-schemes. This causes problems on every stage of the scheme from data collection to last-mile delivery.
Better results: India’s Pulse Polio Universal Immunisation Programme helped it to become polio-free in 2014. This shows the country has the potential to run universal programs and achieve better results.
Avoiding Inclusion/Exclusion errors: Universal system will encompass every individual and household in the country thereby tackling the problem of inclusion/exclusion.
This would allow anyone who is in need of foodgrains to access these schemes especially the migrant populations.
Improved Living Standard: Access to education, maternity benefits, disability benefits, etc. social benefits would ensure a better standard of living for the people.