Social protection scheme to address needs of all ministries

There are now several schemes like widow and old age pensions, sops for the unemployed and scholarships for the underprivileged. These are run by various ministries and therefore a universal social protection scheme will help address the needs of all these ministries, the sources said.

Also, departments that have overlapping roles could be merged, with sources hinting the WCD Ministry could be merged with health in line with the NDA government’s dictum of “minimum government, maximum governance”.

This will ensure greater synergy among departments with a similar mandate, that in turn will ensure decision-making becomes smoother and implementation faster.

Both health and WCD ministries have similar mandates, such as both need Aangawadi data, but in many cases it has been found the WCD Ministry doesn’t share it with the health ministry. To prevent such one-upmanship and overlap of functions, serious thought is being given to the merge these two ministries.