The journal club held on the 17th of April 2025 focused on the report ‘Leveraging Digital Public Infrastructure for Building Inclusive Social Protection Systems’ by Priya Vedavalli, Nikita Kwatra, Sharmadha Srinivasan, and Vikram Sinha of Artha Global published in April 2024.

Background

Portability of social protection, defined as the ease at which beneficiaries can retain access to social protection when they move across geographic lines, is a significant issue in India. This concerns over 400 million Indians (almost a third of the population) who are internal migrants, for whom accessing government services becomes a challenge due to a changing place of residence.

The report explores how Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), which the authors define as “digital systems that provide identity, enable payments, facilitate the delivery of population-scale services  by public and private actors, and other functions that are essential for the public good”, can be used to make social protection more portable, specifically in the context of India.

Overview of the Report

The authors focus on three federally governed Indian social protection schemes:

1. Public Distribution Scheme (PDS) – India’s largest social protection scheme, which provides subsidized grains through fair price shops.
2. Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) – A scheme which provides nutrition, education, immunization, etc., to children up to six years old and pregnant and lactating mothers. Operated through special childcare centers called Anganwadi centers.
3. Building & Other Construction Workers Act (BoCW) – An act which covers several different services for construction workers, which is the primary occupation for internal migrants.

The authors conducted a study which consisted of quantitative research (a non-representative, though randomly sampled survey of 900 beneficiaries), qualitative research (key informant interviews), and secondary research.

Some of the base issues around portability of benefits included:

1. Lack of awareness of some schemes and the portability of schemes
2. Challenges with resource allocation (since migrants are not effectively tracked)
3. Human errors in manual record keeping
4. Complicated registration processes

The authors suggest that DPI can address these challenges by:

1. Spreading awareness of schemes by using digital tools; for example, using identity and linked mobile systems to send targeted messaging.
2. Making enrollment and verification more straightforward for administrators and beneficiaries through centralized platforms, databases, and increased avenues for data collection.
3. Creating a social registry which can reduce the exclusion of potential beneficiaries and streamline the delivery of benefits. For example, digital IDs can be used to combine multiple databases from social protection schemes.
4. Frequently updating data from multiple sources can make resource allocation more effective.
5. Using digital payment systems to provide cash transfers.
6. Tracking the movement of beneficiaries for monitoring and evaluation.
7. Creating a simple means of redressing grievances, such as a centralized platform accessed through digital keys and IDs.

Discussion

During Journal Club, the LIRNEasia team evaluated the research approach and findings from the paper, while reflecting on its relevance for Sri Lanka.

The authors’ position that DPI tools can enhance portability of social protection is generally accepted. Since Sri Lanka is a smaller nation (geographically), with largely centrally governed social protection schemes, portability may not be as high a priority issue as it was in India. Additionally, the issue of portability may not arise in the case of cash transfers which are made to bank accounts and therefore can be accessed from multiple locations. Still, challenges could occur when proximity to the place of registration, validity, and delivery is crucial to obtaining a service. This includes many in-kind transfers, such as providing nutrition and health checkups.

During our discussion, we also considered how Aswesuma (Sri Lanka’s flagship social assistance scheme) requires beneficiaries to submit an address, and what impacts this may have on the homeless.

We also covered the extent to which the transformational impact of DPI may differ between the two countries. In India, Aadhaar was the first nearly universal identity; however, Sri Lanka has had the National Identity Card system in place for decades. This might make it easier to implement a digitized identity, but it can also create a different problem of having to navigate existing laws, regulations, and institutions.

Find the slide set of this journal club below.

 By Anish Fonseka

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