Fiscal leakage, faulty data hike welfare outlay by 4-7%: Report

Time of India

19 hours ago

NEW DELHI: Fiscal leakage and erroneous or duplicate beneficiary records drain budgets, inflating welfare outlays by an estimated 4-7% annually, a report released by
Niti Aayog
on Tuesday said, stressing the urgent need for robust data quality to fortify digital governance, build public trust, and ensure efficient service delivery.
The report, titled "India's Data Imperative: The pivot towards quality", said policy blind spots, and inconsistent, non-standardised datasets distort the situation on the ground, leading to mis-targeted schemes or delayed course corrections.
Citizens confronting mismatched records, rejected claims, or endless rectification queues lose confidence in digital governance, it emphasised.
The report detailed the scale of the country's digital public infrastructure and the need to ensure quality and precision across the value chain.
"India's digital public infrastructure now operates at a scale few imagined a decade ago".
For instance, it pointed out that in April 2025, Unified Payments Interface (UPI) processed 1,789 crore transactions worth Rs 23,90,000 crore, rivalling the monthly GDP of several mid-sized economies. Aadhaar authenticated 2,707 crore identity requests in FY2024-25, making it the common key for banking, welfare and an array of private-sector services.
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More than 36.9 crore Ayushman cards are now in circulation, providing cashless hospital care to half a billion citizens, as per the Niti report.
But the next test is of precision and not reach, it pointed out, calling for collaboration across ministries and departments and between states. "What if just 5% of records are flawed, and those belong to our most vulnerable citizens? The true test of digital infrastructure is how precisely it represents each individual, not just how many people it onboards," it stressed.
"As platforms mature, the focus must shift from expansion to fidelity. Digital highways only create public value when every record is accurate, complete, and current. And no stack of audits can rescue accuracy if the people who create or rely on a record have no sight or stake in it. Confidence endures only when the people who depend on a record can also see and correct it," the report said.
It examined the enormous challenges posed by poor data quality and detailed practical, easy-to-use tools such as a data-quality scorecard to measure and track data quality attributes, and a data-quality maturity framework for self-assessment and roadmap development.
As data volumes explode, it is imperative for data quality to keep up with both what is being generated and the decades of legacy records still in use. Reducing or eliminating gaps, duplication, and timing lags will allow records to be precise, complete, and up to date. When one wrong digit can freeze a pension or misroute a subsidy, quality is not a technical afterthought but a frontline service obligation, the report stated.
"India's digital governance will only be as strong as the quality of data that powers it. As India moves from scale to precision, data quality must become a national priority-on par with infrastructure and platforms," it added.
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