The Uttarakhand Cabinet has given a significant boost to digital governance and effective welfare delivery through the approval of introducing the Devbhoomi Parivar Yojana, according to which each family in the state will receive a unique family identification number (Family ID). The program will be focused on making sure that every rural or urban family will be able to access and enjoy government welfare schemes without any problems.
The state government holds the Family ID system to be a comprehensive database that will be able to directly connect the families to the different welfare schemes of the state and the central government. In this unique identification number, families shall be in a position to monitor which benefits they are eligible to get, which they already got and which they are yet to collect. The officials consider that this action will provide a great contribution to the sphere of transparency, duplication of benefits, and efficient welfare distribution.
Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami highlighted that the program will put Uttarakhand among the few Indian states to implement a family-based digital welfare delivery program. Each and every family in Devbhoomi will now have a digital identity. This will assist the government in determining the real beneficiaries and no deserving household is left behind, as Dhami stated after the Cabinet meeting.
Devbhoomi Family ID will also be of special use to urban families, where there are no extended family books at hand. The government intends to convert the current databases into the new digital database in rural areas where they already have panchayat registers that contain family data. After the rollout of the scheme, families will be issued a special code that can be used to access the welfare benefits, apply to schemes, or determine eligibility on a centralized platform.
The government also came up with a number of other important decisions during the same Cabinet meeting. Disaster victims like those in Dharali have also been provided with a higher relief amount of ₹5 lakh as compared to ₹4 lakh, loss of life, and fully damaged pucca houses. A committee has also been established to investigate the regularization of daily-wage and contractual workers who are employed under the different departments.
According to the officials, the success of the Family ID scheme is highly anticipated to be based on the quality of the collected data, departmental coordination, and awareness of the citizens, although it would be required to achieve a high level of efficiency in delivering welfare. The government has also promised that there will be effective data protection and verification systems.
Uttarakhand would have a simplified, faster, and more transparent welfare governance with the rollout of the Devbhoomi Parivar Yojana, which would ensure that development really comes to every family within the hill state.
