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Doddaiah is 97 years old. He lives in a village in HD Kote taluk near the Karnataka–Kerala border and the backwaters of the Kabini River.
With the primary road out of his village blocked, accessing his pension means a gruelling journey: a three-kilometre walk, followed by another five or six kilometres by vehicle to reach a point where he can withdraw cash. For a 97-year-old, the strain and dependence on others are immense.
Worse, there is no guarantee of money at the end of the journey. Doddaiah and his family have previously travelled all the way to the withdrawal point only to find that his pension had not been credited.
His experience points to a much wider problem. For many pensioners in rural Karnataka, accessing a pension means travelling several kilometres, spending scarce money on transport, losing a day’s wages, and sometimes returning empty-handed. Yet, in official government records, a social security pension is considered “delivered” the moment the money enters a bank account. Karnataka must stop equating a successful bank transfer with actual access to social security.
Karnataka provides social security pensions to over 83 lakh people, involving an expenditure of around Rs 10,835 crore. Under schemes like the Sandhya Suraksha Yojane, elderly citizens receive Rs 1,200 a month. Yet, despite the massive scale of these welfare transfers, the current system does not account for what pensioners may have to spend or endure just to convert that digital balance into tangible cash.
The financial burden of accessing a pension is common across rural Karnataka.
Take 65-year-old Basavaraj from Raichur district. He travels six kilometres to withdraw his pension. Each attempt costs him transport fare and a day’s wages. For those relying on irregular daily labour, a pension only supplements earnings. When accessing it itself means losing a day’s income, part of its value is already lost.
For persons with disabilities, the barriers can be even more severe. In Karnataka, disability pensioners receive between Rs 800 and Rs 1,400 a month, depending on the assessed percentage of disability.
Eeramma, her father Dodda Hanumanthappa, and her sister from Dharwad have been receiving disability pensions for nearly 20 years. Since there is no bank branch in their village, they must travel about four kilometres to the nearest village to withdraw their pensions. With no reliable bus or auto service, each trip can cost between Rs 40 and Rs 70 per person.
Once at the bank, withdrawing the pension can take two to three hours, with no priority service for persons with disabilities or senior citizens. A welfare system designed to support persons with disabilities thus requires them to overcome precisely the kinds of mobility barriers that make such support necessary in the first place.
The problem can begin even before the journey. Pensioners may not know whether the money has been credited; Eeramma’s family sometimes travels to the bank simply to find out, while others rely on word of mouth from neighbours.
Digital systems often assume that pensioners have active mobile phones linked to their bank accounts and can understand payment notifications. Without this information, pensioners may travel to a bank or withdrawal point without even knowing whether their pension has been credited.
Even after reaching a bank or withdrawal point, server outages, biometric failures, or transaction delays can turn the trip into a wasted one. Each failed attempt compounds the loss through travel, lost wages, and time.
Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT) can make pension administration more transparent and efficient. But a successful transfer completes only one part of social security delivery.
To convert a bank balance into cash, rural pensioners rely on bank branches, Customer Service Points (CSPs), or banking correspondents. CSPs may reduce distance, but they can create different accountability problems.
The transaction exists in the bank’s digital logs, but the pensioner may leave with no paper proof of what was credited, withdrawn, or deducted. Bank transfers have not eliminated intermediaries; in many places, they have replaced government functionaries with private agents whom elderly and vulnerable citizens may struggle to hold accountable.
This is not an argument against technology. Digital systems are valuable for maintaining records, authentication and monitoring payments.
A recent evaluation of the National Social Assistance Programme, commissioned by the Union Ministry of Rural Development across ten states, reinforces the importance of getting the last mile right. The study notes that pensions help elderly persons, widows and persons with disabilities meet essential needs, reduce dependence on family members and gain greater independence. Significantly, it recommends that doorstep pension delivery, as practised in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana, be adopted by other states to support pensioners with mobility constraints.
This last-mile problem is not inevitable. Neighbouring Andhra Pradesh offers a different model: technology can streamline pension administration while the state continues to take responsibility for getting the pension to the pensioner.
In Andhra Pradesh, digital systems maintain records and monitor delivery, but government functionaries remain responsible for physically delivering cash to pensioners at their doorstep. With over 62 lakh pensions released in August 2026 through this model, the state demonstrates that large-scale, human-centred delivery is possible.
Doorstep cash delivery may be criticised as outdated or vulnerable to corruption. But digital transfers are not automatically transparent, nor is cash inherently opaque. Fixed amounts, predictable schedules, identifiable functionaries and digital authentication can limit discretion while allowing pensioners to identify an underpayment immediately.
More importantly, such a model changes where responsibility lies. Instead of asking a pensioner to travel until the pensioner reaches the state’s money, the state takes responsibility for ensuring that the pension reaches her.
As the Andhra Pradesh High Court observed in May 2026, social security pensions are not government charity; they are a fundamental right designed to ensure a dignified life. If pensions are meant to protect dignity, success cannot be measured merely by money reaching a bank account but by whether pensioners can access it without disproportionate hardship.
By leaving the last mile largely to banks and pensioners, the government may save administrative costs, but some of those costs are transferred to pensioners. For someone surviving on Rs 1,200 a month, spending Rs 100 on travel consumes more than 8% of the pension. For someone who must forgo a day's wage or travel despite age or disability, the cost is far greater.
Karnataka should therefore consider a standardised doorstep delivery system for social security pensions, with digital authentication, receipts, a predictable payment schedule, and clear administrative accountability.
This need not deny pensioners a choice. Those who can conveniently access bank transfers should be free to continue doing so. But doorstep delivery should be a public delivery option available across the pension system, rather than forcing every pensioner to navigate the banking system simply because the government has completed an electronic transfer.
At minimum, the state must track what happens after a pension is credited: how far pensioners travel, how much they spend, how many failed attempts they endure, and whether they receive proper records of their transactions.
Banks and withdrawal points should also provide priority service for senior citizens and persons with disabilities. But that does not answer the larger question: why should completing a social security payment remain primarily the pensioner’s burden?
The principle should be simple: a pension is not delivered when the government sends the money. It is delivered when the pensioner can actually receive it with dignity.
(With assistance from Chinthana Foundation, Ajjampura and Prathibhe Organisation, HD Kote and inputs from Jagruti, Belagavi district.)
Naveen Kumar Gajjalagari, Venkateswarlu Kuruva, and Chakradhar Buddha work with LibTech India, a centre within Collaborative Research and Dissemination (CORD). Views expressed here are the authors’ own.