Twenty kilometres from Ranchi at Tigra Panchayat in Ratu block, Murshid Ansari is checking the balance in his account with the Bank of India. For the 27-year-old farmer working under centrally-sponsored schemes, wages have come in.

?Earlier, we used to go to the nearest post office, which would take a day to make the payment. We also had to spend R20-25 for commuting,? Ansari said. Now, he receives payment from the local business correspondent at the panchayat office, a few minutes from his home in Tigra.

Ansari has started saving some of the money in his bank account. ?Now that I can withdraw money whenever it is required, I don’t need to take it out all at a time.?

?In Tigra village alone, almost 15-20 UID-linked transactions are done per day,? said Mahmood Alam, a business correspondent in the village. ?Villagers inform rojgar sevaks about their requirements and they, in turn, inform us,? he said.

In 12 blocks in Jharkhand, thousands like Ansari have started receiving payments for government-sponsored schemes through the UID-based delivery mechanism ? part of the pilot project being rolled out by the UID Authority, an adjunct of the Planning Commission. The first UID-based transaction in Jharkhand was on December 24 last year. In the last two months, at least 4,000 transactions have been made towards NREGA wages.

These are small numbers, but the impact is visible. In 2010-11, R1,300 crore was paid towards NREGA wages in Jharkhand and the number of active beneficiaries was above 2 million. But of these in Ansari?s next-door Dohakatu panchayat, state government estimates show at least 15% of the NREGA workers were non-existent.

The figures came out after the beneficiaries were mapped for the Aadhaar cards.

Biometric authentication has been a challenging task for government officials as bringing all stakeholders under one umbrella was not easy. ?Door-to-door mapping takes time but that has started bearing fruit. Convincing villagers was initially difficult, but now they have understood the utility of the identity card,? said Bhagirath Prasad, executive magistrate of Ramgarh district.

After matching NREGA job cards with Aadhaar, no-frills accounts were opened for beneficiaries. Arbind Prasad, assistant director general of UID Authority, says any government payment can now be delivered through the UID-linked mechanism. ?We are trying to scale up the UID-linked payments. The biggest challenge lies in account mapping and opening bank accounts,? he said.

Interest has grown. Some like Pathras Tirkey of Ratu block told FE he wanted to be covered in the mapping programme. Tirkey found the system to be useful as none else can withdraw money with a forged identity. ?I know some cases where wages were withdrawn by strangers by forging identities,? he said, sitting at a grocery store in Tigra village.

So far, a ?one-block, one-bank? model is being followed in the pilot projects for UID-linked payments, but that involves opening another bank account in case a beneficiary has an account with one bank. ?We will gradually shift to a ?one-district, many-banks? model where one bank will serve as the lead bank. Customers will not have to open new accounts with the bank working in their area and all payments will be routed through the lead bank who will distribute the amount,? said Tarlochan Singh, manager (Ranchi zone) of Bank of India.

Out of 24 districts in Jharkhand, Bank of India is the lead bank in 15. Singh?s bank has also begun extending small-ticket loans in some blocks through business correspondents.

?Enhanced authentication in Aadhaar cards will help in carrying out due diligence while giving loans,? Singh said.

?Initially, we will have to incur costs to open accounts but gradually, business will start to take off. Of around 3.5 lakh no-frill accounts in Ranchi zone, almost R1.5 crore is with us as deposits,? Singh said.

There are hiccups, of course. Many beneficiaries are yet to receive Aadhaar cards even after mapping of accounts is complete. Connectivity has also been an issue while the pilot project is being rolled out. ?Such stumbling blocks will be there for projects as big as UID. But payments are reaching the right beneficiaries ruling out any leakage,? said Santosh Kumar, NREGA commissioner of Jharkhand.

The Jharkhand government is already mulling distribution of food grains through UID-based delivery mechanism too. The pilot project for UID-based payment for schemes like MNREGA, old age pension and scholarships has shown it the way.