"Leakages in welfare schemes for Scheduled Castes are less a design failure than an accountability failure." Discuss with recent examples.

Welfare schemes for Scheduled Castes leak money in two ways: through how they are designed, such as how funds flow and who checks eligibility, and through how weakly officials are held to account once money is diverted. Recent cases show design flaws make leakage possible, but weak accountability is what lets it go on.

Design failures: real but fixable

• Payments made through middlemen. In Sivaganga (Tamil Nadu), over ₹2.35 crore meant for Adi Dravidar hostel students' soap and hair oil was allegedly siphoned off between 2017 and 2023. None of it was credited to students' accounts [1].
• Offline, staggered fund flows. The 2020 revamp of the Post-Matric Scholarship for SCs moved to an online platform. It mandated DBT, preferably Aadhaar-enabled, with fixed release schedules [2]. This was an admission that the earlier design was easy to exploit.
• Thin monitoring built in. The same reform added social audits, annual third-party evaluation and half-yearly institutional self-audits [2].

Accountability failures: the deeper problem

• Detection depends on outsiders. The Sivaganga fraud came to light through an activist's complaint and a citizen's PIL, not internal audit. Eight tahsildars were later implicated [1].
• Slow disciplinary action. In October 2026, the Madurai Bench of the Madras HC criticised the State for not even appointing an inquiry officer [1]. CVC norms say investigation plus proceedings should ordinarily end within 6 months [3].
• Procedural shields. The 2nd ARC (2007) observed that "the dishonest seem to corner the full benefit of Article 311". It recommended simpler discipline procedures and no prior sanction in red-handed cases [4].
• No deterrence. Fixing the design without punishing officials just moves the leakage elsewhere. Under DBT, the risk shifts to fake beneficiaries and collusion at the verification stage.

Assessment Design and accountability work together. DBT narrows the routes for leakage, but only timely inquiries and penalties stop officials from trying.

The statement is therefore largely valid. Design reforms like DBT and online platforms are necessary but not enough. The way forward is to combine them with time-bound departmental inquiries, mandatory social audits and ARC-style procedural reform. That would give Scheduled Castes the substantive equality promised by Article 46 and advance SDG 16 on accountable institutions.