Best Practice in respect to Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY)

Author: Ministry of Women and Child Development, Time: 2018-11-30 14:39:36

1. INTRODUCTION

1.1 Under-nutrition continues to adversely affect majority of women in India. In India, every third woman is undernourished and every second woman is anemic. An undernourished mother almost inevitably gives birth to a low birth weight baby. When poor nutrition starts in-utero, it extends throughout the life cycle since the changes are largely irreversible. Owing to economic and social distress many women continue to work to earn a living for their family right up to the last days of their pregnancy. Furthermore, they resume working soon after childbirth, even though their bodies might not permit it, thus preventing their bodies from fully recovering on one hand, and also impeding their ability to exclusively breastfeed their young infant in the first six months.

1.2 From 01.01.2017, the Maternity Benefit Programme would be implemented in all the districts of the country in accordance with the provision of the National Food Security Act, 2013. The programme is named as ‘Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana’ (PMMVY).

1. THE PROGRAMME

2.1 Objectives of PMMVY

2.1.1 Providing partial compensation for the wage loss in terms of cash incentives so that the woman can take adequate rest before and after delivery of the first living child.

2.1.2 The cash incentive provided would lead to improved health seeking behaviour amongst the Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers (PW&LM).

2.2 Target beneficiaries

2.2.1 All Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers, excluding PW&LM who are in regular employment with the Central Government or the State Governments or PSUs or those who are in receipt of similar benefits under any law for the time being in force.

2.2.2 All eligible Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers who have their pregnancy on or after

01.01.2017 for first child in family.

2.2.3 The date and stage of pregnancy for a beneficiary would be counted with respect to her LMP date as mentioned in the MCP card.

2.3 Benefits under PMMVY

2.3.1 Cash incentives in three instalments i.e. first instalment of ₹ 1000/- on early registration of pregnancy at the Anganwadi Centre (AWC)/ approved Health facility as may be identified by the respective administering State/UT, second instalment of ₹ 2000/- after six months of pregnancy on receiving at least one ante-natal check-up (ANC) and third instalment of ₹ 2000/- after child birth is registered and the child has received the first cycle of BCG, OPV, DPT and Hepatitis-B, or its equivalent/ substitute.

2.3.2 The eligible beneficiaries would receive the incentive given under the Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY) for Institutional delivery and the incentive received under JSY would be accounted towards maternity benefits so that on an average a woman gets ₹ 6000/-.

2.4 Conditionalities and Instalments

2.4.1 PW&LM shall receive a cash benefit of ₹ 5000/- in three instalments at the following stages as specified in the table given below:

	Conditionalities and Instalments
Instalment	Conditions	Amount
First Instalment	Early Registration of pregnancy	₹ 1,000/-
Second Instalment	Received at least one ANC (can be claimed after 6 months of pregnancy)	₹ 2,000/-
Third Instalment	Child Birth is registered Child has received first cycle of BCG, OPV,DPT and Hepatitis-B or its equivalent/substitute	₹ 2,000/-

2.4.2 The eligible beneficiaries would receive the remaining cash incentive as per approved norms towards the Maternity Benefit under JSY after institutional delivery so that on an average, a woman will get ₹ 6000/-.

2. Broad distinctive features

3.1 PMMVY uses a four stage process of Apply, Verify, Approve and Pay which is recognized as an optimized model for service delivery. PMMVY-CAS ensures ease of working and is citizen centric in all aspects

3.2 Monitoring through Dashboards and Reports at grass-root level by Adoption of LGD in MIS

3.3 LGD Codes are mapped for location of the beneficiaries

3.4 Funds for beneficiaries are maintained in dedicated Escrow Bank Account at State/UT level

3.5 Removes the bottleneck on fund transfer in form of Treasury account

3.6 Funds are transferred through DBT directly in the account of beneficiaries

3.7 Aadhaar compliant scheme as per Section 7 of the Aadhaar Act, 2016

3.8 Disbursement of funds to the beneficiaries is done on real time basis

3.9 The PMMVY-CAS enables tracking the status of each beneficiary under the scheme resulting in expedited, accountable and better grievance redressal

3.10 All India dashboard for monitoring the implementation of the scheme

PROCESS FLOW

JOURNEY SO FAR:

Issues identified during baseline study by DMEO that was required to be addressed by PMMVY:
- Beneficiaries did not receive cash incentive on time. Some received lump sum amount one year after delivery.
- Discrepancy in figures of cash transfer reported by the State authorities and what was actually reported by the beneficiaries.
- The funds for many blocks were pending to be released since 2013-14.
- Beneficiaries were not aware of payments being made
- Inconsistency across States in amount and number of installments. Beneficiary received less than the stipulated amount in some States.
Best Practice – Innovation and Re-engineering:

Approximately 99% of beneficiaries under the scheme have enrolled using Aadhaar.
The following comparative table explains as to how PMMVY has analyzed, re-designed and improvised the processes involved in General schemes for transferring benefits to beneficiaries.

General Schemes	PMMVY
Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) Enablement
General Schemes don’t use DBT for transfer of benefits to beneficiaries.	PMMVY is transferring cash benefits to beneficiaries through DBT mode only.
Simplifying Transfer of Funds and time required to transfer funds to beneficiary
Under General Schemes, the Central Government used to transfer funds to consolidated account of the States/UTs. The States/UTs would then get approval for their share of funds and transfer to the departments’ treasury account. Usually, this step serves as a bottleneck for implementation of schemes due to various administrative reasons. The Drawing and Disbursing Officers (DDOs) of each district used to get the funds form the department. The approved physical list of beneficiaries used to be reach DDO after several levels of	PMMVY has re-designed the transfer of funds process to bring in efficiency, effectiveness and improve service delivery. MWCD sends the central share directly to the dedicated Escrow Bank Account of the State/UT. PMMVY-CAS collates the list of beneficiaries for the whole State/UT and sends it to SNO electronically in form of a batch file. Hence, only the SNO interacts with PFMS using his Digital Signature Certificate, with the approval facilitated by PMMVY-CAS. This re-designing has brought down the time required to transfer benefits within 30 days from date of submission of duly filled up application

approvals from CDPOs and the DDO would get approval from his seniors and then approve payments to eligible beneficiaries by maintaining and submitting paper based documentation like print advice through PFMS.	form by beneficiary. The PMMVY implementation guidelines mandates this and PMMVY-CAS enables reporting of delays in payments.
Identification of unique beneficiaries
Under General Schemes, Aadhaar details of beneficiary is not captured and leveraged. In addition, there are no automatic checks in place to check if the beneficiary is unique and has not claimed benefits multiple times anywhere else in the country.	Leveraging the Aadhaar details of beneficiaries, PMMVY-CAS enables identification and enabling deduplication for unique beneficiaries throughout the country. Apart from identifying duplicate beneficiaries, PMMVY-CAS also allows beneficiaries to claim any of the three installments from any location throughout the country. This step will ensure that the scheme caters to migrating class of citizens. This shall also remove possibility of ghost beneficiaries/ multiple payments to same beneficiary.
Monitoring through Dashboards and Reports at grass-root level by Adoption of LGD in MIS
Under General Schemes, MIS is not in place to enable monitoring of scheme implementation at Village and Anganwadi level for each district of the States/UTs.	PMMVY-CAS enables the various stakeholders from the PMO/Central Government level to the District/Project level with almost-real-time multiple dashboards allowing them to monitor the implementation status of PMMVY throughout the country till the village/Anganwadi level and take immediate corrective actions. The PMMVY-CAS also allows stakeholders to generate reports of variances for beneficiaries according to the required jurisdiction of the stakeholder. Also, the adoption of Local Government Directory
	(LGD) for implementing the scheme has resulted in updation of master data of States/UTs and this uniformity shall enable comparison/collating of implementation status/statistics of different/within schemes even at the village level throughout the country.
Improved accountability for better Grievance Redressal
General Schemes usually rely on maintaining and tracking the physical documentation for grievance redressal of beneficiaries which leads to large delays and even non-resolution of grievances	The PMMVY-CAS enables tracking the status of each beneficiary like why her application was rejected or since when it is pending resolution. This enables expedited resolution and certainty in grievance redressal. The audit trail of the PMMVY-CAS ensures that the officials concerned are accountable for their decisions.
Paperless Process flow and Simplification of Scheme forms
General Schemes’ scheme forms capture a lot of fields which are not directly relevant for transferring of benefits to the beneficiary. Also, these forms and related physical documents are used for implementation of scheme and no digital files are used.	Under PMMVY, the beneficiary data is digitized at the block/project level and all the validations and approvals happens digitally. Also, the scheme forms have been simplified which captures only minimal and essential beneficiary data. The digitization streamlines and expedites the process, enables monitoring of status, reduces cost involved, ensures effective grievance redressal and accountability of officials.