A decade and a half ago, a report of the comptroller and auditor general (CAG), claiming a huge ‘presumptive’ loss in the sale of telecom spectrum and coal blocks, ignited a nationwide movement against corruption and voted out the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Today, a series damning reports since December 2025, exposing systemic fraud across India's flagship welfare schemes, are met with deafening silence.
CAG reports in the past weeks have exposed fraud and mismanagement in goods and services tax (GST) collections, direct benefit transfers (DBT), skill development schemes, housing programmes and healthcare delivery—with amounts running into thousands of crores of rupees. Yet, the findings of a constitutional audit authority no longer stir the national conscience. What explains this contrast?
Digital Mirage
The ruling government has repeatedly claimed that DBT and ‘Digital India’ were a game-changer that enabled smooth transfer of ₹34 lakh crore directly to beneficiaries and ‘saved’ ₹2.7 lakh crore. Ministers routinely disparage former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's 1985 observation that only 15 paise of every rupee reached the intended beneficiaries in drought-affected areas, contrasting this with much better quality of delivery. But recent CAG audits suggest digital systems have not solved this problem; nor can they hide it any longer.
On 18 December 2025, CAG Sanjay Murthy warned that thousands of crores of rupees were flowing through DBT systems without mandatory checks (CAG Says Thousands of Crores of Rupees Flowing into DBT Accounts without Checks: Report). CAG reports have flagged pensions being paid to thousands of deceased beneficiaries in 2023 because databases are not being ‘de-duplicated’ and many government departments continue to work in silos even within the same ministry. This indicates structural failures, despite the availability of much-vaunted digital infrastructure.
CAG reports tabled at the end of 2025 and 2026—mostly for the period ending 2023—show that digital systems are often facilitating fraud rather than preventing it. The audits have flagged ghost payments, glitches, data fraud, payments to ineligible beneficiaries, unutilised funds and outright mismanagement leading to thousands of crore rupees being squandered, while the poorest Indians are denied welfare, homes and healthcare.
Shockingly, even sophisticated, automated systems for tax collection have turned out to be dodgy. On 11 December 2025, a CAG audit exposed inconsistencies worth ₹21,695 crore in GST collections. The report detailed systemic failures including mismatches in input tax credit (ITC), compliance deviations in over 2,519 cases and short payments of tax and interest. If the country’s primary revenue engine is leaking, it is unsurprising that social welfare schemes are riddled with bigger holes? (CAG Flags ₹21,695 Crore GST Compliance Deviations)
Skills Illusion
The rot extends to health and skill development. A performance audit on the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), tabled in December 2025, revealed that between 2015 and 2022, over 94% of beneficiary records—affecting 9.06mn (million) people had missing, bogus, or invalid bank details. Placeholders like ‘123456’ or ‘null’ were used for bank accounts, indicating that the identity of trainees and the veracity of payments cannot be trusted. Thousands of underage and ineligible candidates were certified and training partners make wildly fake claims such as conducting training on 31st February! While the government approved an additional ₹8,800 crore to restructure the mission in early-2025, lakhs of candidates did not receive the promised incentives. (Read: 94% Bank Details Missing, Underage Candidates Certified, Placements Unverifiable in PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana: CAG)
The housing sector has an equally grim story. Despite claims of great progress, a recent CAG audit of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) in Uttar Pradesh unearthed massive implementation gaps. Tens of thousands of houses claimed as ‘complete’ were found to be of poor quality or missing essential toilets, electricity and water. It also detected cyber fraud, where ₹86.20 lakh, intended for 159 beneficiaries, was diverted to unauthorised bank accounts.
That CAG audit findings are not getting the attention they deserve is clear from the water contamination deaths in Indore which has been winning awards for being India’s cleanest city. A CAG audit in 2019, covering the period between 2013 and 2018, had warned that nearly 900,000 people were being supplied contaminated water. Remember, the audit covered a period from 2013 to 2018 and the vulnerability to raw sewage seeping into drinking water had been highlighted! This is by no means an exception. In 2024, a CAG report pointed out how urban local bodies had consistently failed to implement mandatory water quality testing and pipeline maintenance protocols. Activists have labelled this ‘criminal negligence’. And yet, in January 2026, over a dozen people have lost their lives and hundreds of others fell ill after drinking water contaminated with sewage.
Parallel horrors have emerged in Delhi, our capital city. A Delhi Jal Board report tabled this month reports that 55% of groundwater is unfit for consumption posing serious health risks; moreover, carcinogenic poly-electrolytes continue to be used at water treatment plants, despite explicit bans.
The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) is similarly plagued by fraud and misreporting. While funds flow into JMM, the water pipelines are often missing or remain dry after installation. A policy circle report documents over 17,000 complaints involving procurement lapses and has recorded price deviations of up to 30% in Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, leading to the blacklisting of several contractors and action against 2,300 officials.
Healthcare Travails
Nowhere is the crisis of accountability more visible than in healthcare. The CAG’s 2023 performance audit of the Ayushman Bharat-Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB-PMJAY) had already made headlines when it exposed 749,000 ‘"ghost’ beneficiaries registered under a single fake mobile number (9999999999). By January 2024, the rot had spread to what investigators call a ‘murder for money’ racket. In Gujarat, a doctor was arrested for performing unnecessary heart surgeries on villagers solely to siphon off PMJAY funds. Over 1,000 hospitals have since been de-empanelled and ₹231 crore in penalties levied. At the same time, private hospitals are increasingly refusing to offer ‘free’ treatment, frustrated with unpaid reimbursement of free treatment leading to losses. Every other day, viral media posts have exposed the hollowness of the healthcare promise, even while large sums are earmarked for the scheme.
Normalising Failure
That CAG findings provoke little public reaction shows that we have normalised corruption and failure, or worse, that citizens are barely aware that vast sums allocated for poverty reduction in every Union Budget are simply not delivering results. Digital India was meant to remove intermediaries; instead, it has often replaced them with opacity, automated fraud and ghost beneficiaries. Those who attempted to expose scholarship scams have paid with their lives. Even the connection between large public infrastructure projects and election funding—outside the CAG’s remit—has come to be accepted without serious scrutiny of shoddy execution, planning failures or outright collapse.
CAG fulfils its constitutional role by documenting these failures; but its reports increasingly resemble post-mortems on programmes already buried by the time Parliament sees them. When the media does not carry these findings forward, citizens lack the information needed to demand accountability, prosecution or structural reform. In the absence of such pressure, governance is being driven more by propaganda than by the delivery of a better quality of life.
The fact remains that frauds have not only increased these days, but they have also been rather facilitated with the increased digitilisation , is the ground reality. The Governance system instead of getting strenghtened and very effective with the technology and Artificial Intelligence usage on a very large scale , has been weakenning every passing day making the people feel let down without getting the benefits of the so called economic progress and reportedly benign inflationary conditions. The assessment of the benefits enjoyed by the people at large in terms of improved infrastructure in the area of travel, insurance, and enhanced quality of life with benefits of reduced cost of living, better health at reasonable costs , reasonable education at affordable cost , and satisfactory maintenance of relationships and emotions should be more relevant and transparent to judge the efficacy of the technology and the administration.
It is not surprising that without checks the whole system was working and all the tax payers money were swindled .Hope atleast now the present govt wakes up and does a complete revamp of the loopholes and ensures that the money is spent in a right ful way and goes to the right person and not to some person who is non existent
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Indore has been celebrated as India's cleanest city for eight consecutive years. In December 2025, this reputation was shattered when contaminated sewage killed at least 10 residents and 270 others fell ill, a result of sheer...
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