India and World Bank Sign $125 Million Loan to Support Access to Social Protection Services in West Bengal

The Government of India, the Government of West Bengal, and the World Bank signed a $125 million IBRD loan to support efforts in West Bengal to help poor and vulnerable groups access social protection services.

West Bengal has over 400 programmes that provide social assistance, health care, and employment. The majority of these services are provided by an umbrella platform called Jai Bangla. The West Bengal Building State Capability for Inclusive Social Protection Project will provide state-level support for these interventions, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable groups such as women, tribal and scheduled caste households, the elderly, and households in the state’s disaster-prone coastal regions.

According to the Ministry of Finance‘s Department of Economic Affairs, “the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to have seamless systems in place to deliver inclusive and equitable social protection in times of crisis.” This project will focus on strengthening the state government’s capacity to expand coverage and access to social assistance and targeted services for the state’s poor and vulnerable populations.”

The agreement was signed on behalf of the Government of India by Shri Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance; on behalf of the Government of West Bengal by Shri Sudip Kumar Sinha, Secretary, Finance Department; and on behalf of the World Bank by Mr Junaid Ahmad, Country Director, India.

According to a recent survey, while food and in-kind transfers reach the majority of poor and vulnerable households in West Bengal, cash transfers are underutilized. Access to social pensions is also limited for the elderly, widows, and disabled people due to time-consuming application processes and a lack of automated systems for application and eligibility verification.

Over the next four years, the project will help strengthen the state’s ability to expand coverage and access to social assistance, as well as deliver cash transfers to the poor and vulnerable, by establishing a consolidated social registry.

West Bengal is confronted with issues such as manual data entry, inconsistent beneficiary data across departments, and a lack of data storage and data exchange protocols. The project will assist in digitizing the state’s unified delivery system, the Jai Bangla platform, in order to consolidate disparate social assistance programmes and accelerate the delivery of social pensions to vulnerable and poor households.

The project will also support the development of a teleconsultation network for social care services, which will be supplemented by a cadre of case management workers who will provide advice on eldercare and connections to health services and facilities to households. It will also establish an institutional platform to improve the coordination and effectiveness of government interventions aimed at addressing the state’s low female labor-force participation.