Discuss how technological interventions (DBT, e-KYC, face authentication) address structural leakages in India's rural employment guarantee architecture.

India's rural employment guarantee—now the VB–G RAM G Act, 2025, replacing MGNREGA from 1 July 2026 [1]—long suffered structural leakages: ghost workers, muster-roll fraud, wage diversion and delayed payments. A DBT–e-KYC–face-authentication stack is embedded to plug these at source.

Nature of structural leakages

• Ghost/fake muster rolls inflating attendance and person-days.
• Wage diversion through intermediaries and benami accounts.
• Delayed, unverifiable payments eroding the wage-floor effect [2].

Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT)

• Wages credited straight to worker bank/post-office accounts, removing cash intermediaries and pilferage [2].
• Time-stamped transfers enforce accountability on payment delays.

e-KYC

• Aadhaar-seeded e-KYC-validated Job Cards de-duplicate beneficiaries and eliminate ghost entries before enrolment [3].
• Existing e-KYC-completed cards remain valid till new Gramin Rozgar Guarantee Cards issue, ensuring clean-database continuity [3].

Face authentication

• Face-authentication-based attendance at worksites confirms the actual worker is present, defeating proxy and inflated musters [3].
• Reported rollout across states during transition, tightening the man-day count [1].

Residual concerns

• Rural connectivity gaps and biometric-mismatch exclusions risk denying genuine workers.
• Over-centralised digital control may dilute Gram Panchayat oversight.

Together, the stack shifts anti-leakage effort from post-facto social audit to real-time, verifiable delivery—aligning the JAM trinity with the right-to-work guarantee. If backed by grievance redress and offline fallbacks, technology can convert plugged leakages into wider genuine coverage, advancing inclusive growth under Viksit Bharat @2047 [1].