Would Aswesuma become an Eswesuma (Eyewash)?

The protests that were witnessed in many places in the country in the last few days over the list of beneficiaries of the Aswesuma welfare project are not something that should surprise anybody. Given the large number of people who had set their hopes on being enlisted in the project and the number of those who succeeded, the protests seem to be a natural and spontaneous effect.  

The Chairman of the Welfare Benefit Board (WBB) that handles the project, N. Wijayaratne speaking during a recent interview said that around 3.7 million individuals had applied for the benefits under the project. Nevertheless, the number of families that are to receive payments under four categories of the project is around 2 million, according to a statement posted on the website of the Presidential Secretariat.   

Therefore, hopes of 1.7 million families - almost a similar number of families that have been selected for financial grants - have been dashed once the name list of people selected for benefits was published.   

Some protesters stated that despite them having thus far been beneficiaries of the Samurdhi Programme, they have been dropped out from the Aswesuma Programme. However, the protests subsided following assurances by the State Ministers of Finance and the relevant officials that those applicants who have been dropped out from the selected beneficiaries’ list could appeal to the WBB again, until July 10.   
The very appeal process points to the fact that the authorities had expected an outcry once the list of the beneficiaries is published. However, they claim that the selection process was done through an app so that nobody could influence it.   

WBB Chairman during the said interview stood by the veracity of the selection process, claiming that data on the applicants that were collected through the Divisional Secretariats were fed into the App, which does not accept recommendations of individuals. Also, it has been announced that the distribution of payments to the already selected people would commence today (July 1), irrespective of the appeal process being set in motion. 

The Aswesuma Programme encompasses several social benefit programmes such as the Samurdhi welfare programme, financial assistance programmes for the elderly, kidney patients and the differently abled that are already in place. However, unlike the Janasaviya and Samurdhi welfare programmes, the eligibility of beneficiaries of the Aswesuma Programme would be reviewed annually, despite them being selected for financial assistance for three years, according to the WBB Chairman. 

Apart from those groups that should be permanently looked after by the society such as the elderly, differently-abled and kidney patients, other beneficiaries under the Aswesuma programme have been categorized into four groups, namely the transitional, vulnerable, poor and extremely poor.   

Wijayaratne said that the first two groups numbering about 350,000 families are the people who sank below the poverty line recently due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the economic crisis and each family of those groups would be paid a monthly allowance of Rs 2,500 and Rs. 5,000 respectively.   

He said they are expected to bounce back above the poverty line which is calculated by the Census and Statics Department to be a monthly income of Rs. 13,700 per person, in the near future. The families categorized as poor would be paid Rs. 8000 monthly and the payment for an extremely poor family is Rs. 15,000.   

Will these payments eradicate poverty in the country? Excluding the other factors, the amounts payable alone would be an answer in the negative. A monthly allowance of Rs 2500 payable to the category of “transitional” means just an additional income of Rs. 83 per day for a family and interestingly, this amount is paid to those who lived a relatively comfortable life until recently. Only the “extremely poor” family would receive an allowance of Rs 15,000 per month (Rs 500 per day) which would in fact help them, though it would not “eradicate” their poverty.   

Besides, it would be worth considering the factors that contributed to the failure of the previous poverty eradication programmes - Janasaviya and Samurdhi. Both programmes were aimed at helping the day-to-day life of poor people while persuading them to invest in some sort of income generation. However, these programmes, from their inception were politicized and became political tools in the hands of a particular political party. Janasaviya was a lever for the United National Party to blackmail the poor to support its political activities and Samurdhi helped the People’s Alliance (PA) and the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) in the same way. 

The main handicap of these poverty eradication programmes including the Aswesuma Project is that they are not supported by a viable overall economic development plan. It was the absence of such plans under the past governments that ultimately brought the country to a state of bankruptcy

Thus a large portion of the disbursements of allowances under both the programmes went to the wrong hands.   

The IMF pointed out in March this year “Some social safety net spending is paid to relatively rich families. Around 10 per cent is paid to a rich segment of Sri Lankan society. So that should be corrected.”   

Also, the Centre for Poverty Analysis (CEPA), a not-for-profit organization founded by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) found in 2007 that the Samurdhi food stamp programme which constituted 80 per cent of the total programme budget missed about 40 per cent of the households in the poorest quintile while almost 44 per cent of the budget went to households in the top three quintiles.”   

A review of the Samurdhi project by the World Bank had concluded that “Based on the empirical analysis of the distributional outcomes, Samurdhi does not emerge as an efficient transfer programme. It is modestly successful in reaching the intended beneficiaries, but it transfers a large portion of its resources to the non-poor.”   

In Sri Lanka where everything is politicized and corruption has become the norm in every aspect of life, this is an outcome that has to be expected.   

In a country where income inequality is fast widening the survival of small enterprises is always uncertain and the investments initiated by these two programmes with meagre investments would find it difficult to withstand, despite their professed objective is commendable. Besides, it would be difficult for those investments to cope with unexpected economic storms such as the current economic crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic which have pushed hundreds of thousands of families below the poverty line.   

The main handicap of these poverty eradication programmes including the Aswesuma Project is that they are not supported by a viable overall economic development plan. It was the absence of such plans under the past governments that ultimately brought the country to a state of bankruptcy. 

If Aswesuma Programme too did not become a part of such a plan it would also be an Eswesuma (Eyewash), as Opposition Leader Sajith Premadasa called it.