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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Government's latest election sop: Mobile phones to females workers-Anandita Singh Mankotia

Government's latest election sop: Mobile phones to females workers-Anandita Singh Mankotia

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published Published on Jul 31, 2013   modified Modified on Jul 31, 2013
-The Economic Times


NEW DELHI: India is preparing to give mobile phones to each female member of a household, who has worked for 100 days in 2012 under a rural employment guarantee scheme run by the government, as per an internal presentation of the telecom department.

If implemented, this would be the latest sop the government is planning to woo a population ahead of a slew of state polls leading up to general elections which could be held early next year. This scheme would come close on heels of a food aid programme, the National Food Security Law, which aims to distribute cheap grains to nearly three fourths of India's 1.2 billion people.

The ruling Congress party-led government retained power in 2004 helped to a great extent by promises to guarantee work for India's rural population under a scheme called the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural employment Guarantee Programme ( MNREGA). This scheme will now be the basis for handing out the mobile phones.

According to the presentation seen by ET, the government plans to complete the scheme within three years of the date of implementation. The state governments will be roped in to provide a list of eligible citizens for each village/block/district.

Even though it isn't yet clear as to how the government proposes to finance this scheme but in all likelihood, it could dip into the cash rich universal services obligation fund (USOF), accumulated through an annual 5% levy on the adjusted gross revenue clocked by mobile phone operators, say experts.

At the end of March 2013, the fund had an accumulated amount of 27,949 crore according to the USO fund's data.

The broad contours of the programme would put the onus of providing the handsets bundled with a mobile network on the service provider, which wins the government's contract through competitive bidding and will have to provide a warranty of at least three years along with assurance of easy accessibility to service centers.

These non transferable mobile handsets would have customized embedded opening screen showing details of the scheme and will allow the subscribers to access health records, and records and payment transfers would be through use of mobile number as the first level of authentication.


The Economic Times, 31 July, 2013, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/governments-latest-election-sop-mobile-phones-to-females-workers/articleshow/21498607.cms


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