Major Schemes of the Haryana Government: Facts and PYQs

Haryana runs its welfare schemes on a base that no other state had for so long: a single family identity document, the Parivar Pehchan Patra, from which the income and the members of a household are read before any benefit is given. Around it sit the schemes of the state, an income support for small families, a health cover above the national one, an allowance for educated unemployed youth, incentives to grow something other than paddy and a long line of schemes for the girl child, which the state needed more than most because of its sex ratio. HSSC, HPSC, Haryana Police and clerk examinations ask the year of a scheme, the amount it pays, the income limit for it and the department that runs it, so a table of names and figures is the way to revise this chapter.

The family identity and the income support

The Parivar Pehchan Patra, or family identity card, gives every family of Haryana an eight digit identity number with its verified details, and the state now delivers pensions, scholarships, ration and scheme benefits by reading that record rather than by asking for fresh papers each time. The Mukhyamantri Parivar Samridhi Yojana, begun in 2019, grows out of the same idea: a family whose yearly income is up to Rs 1.80 lakh and whose land is up to five acres gets Rs 6,000 a year, part of it as a direct payment and part as a contribution to pension and insurance cover. The Mukhyamantri Antyodaya Parivar Utthan Yojana then takes the poorest families on that list and tries to lift their income through loans, training and jobs offered at Antyodaya melas.

Health, youth and farming

Chirayu Haryana, announced in 2022, extends the Ayushman Bharat cover of Rs 5 lakh a family a year to families whose yearly income is below Rs 1.80 lakh, far beyond the central list, and Nirogi Haryana screens the health of such families. For young people the Saksham Yuva Yojana, begun in 2016, pays a monthly allowance to educated unemployed youth that rises with their qualification and adds an honorarium for up to a hundred hours of work a month in a government office, so it is an allowance tied to service rather than a dole. The Haryana Kaushal Rozgar Nigam, set up in 2021, hires contractual manpower for departments through one window.

In farming the state has worked mainly on water. Mera Pani Meri Virasat, of 2020, pays an incentive for every acre on which a farmer replaces paddy with maize, pulses, cotton or vegetables, because the paddy belt around Kurukshetra and Kaithal has pushed the water table far down. The Bhavantar Bharpai Yojana of 2018 protects the grower of tomato, onion, potato and cauliflower by paying the difference when the market price falls below a protected rate, and crops are registered for all this on the Meri Fasal Mera Byora portal. The Pashu Kisan Credit Card gives the owner of cattle, buffalo, sheep or goats a card like the Kisan Credit Card, which fits a state whose Murrah buffalo is its own brand.

Women, the girl child and the old

Haryana was the state chosen for the launch of Beti Bachao Beti Padhao, which the Prime Minister began at Panipat on 22 January 2015, and the state had already built its own line of schemes for daughters. The Ladli Yojana, of 2005, pays for the second girl child of a family; Aapki Beti Hamari Beti, of 2015, gives a deposit in the name of the girl, with a larger benefit for the second daughter; the Mukhyamantri Vivah Shagun Yojana pays a marriage grant to poor, widowed and disabled families; and the Mahila Evam Kishori Samman Yojana of 2020 gives free sanitary napkins to women and girls of poor households. The old age Samman Bhatta of Haryana, begun in 1991, was among the earliest old age pensions in the country, and pensions for widows, the disabled and the destitute run beside it.

• The Deen Dayal Upadhyay Antyodaya Parivar Suraksha Yojana, called Dayalu, helps an Antyodaya family on the death or permanent disability of a member.
• The Antyodaya Saral portal and its kendras deliver the services and schemes of all departments through one window, and the Chief Minister’s Window, opened in 2014, is the grievance channel.
• The Haryana Antyodaya Parivar Parivahan Yojana, known by its Happy Card, allows an Antyodaya family a thousand kilometres of free travel in a year in Haryana Roadways buses.
• The Mukhyamantri Doodh Uphar Yojana gives fortified milk to children and to pregnant and nursing women at anganwadis, and Har Hith stores sell the produce of the state through village and town outlets.
• The Deenbandhu Haryana Gram Uday Yojana gives development grants to the smaller villages, which earlier lost out to the larger ones.

Seen together, the schemes of Haryana follow one pattern that examiners like to test: a verified family record first, an income line of Rs 1.80 lakh a year to decide who is poor, and then benefits of money, health cover, training or travel delivered against that record.