Beneficiary

🎯 How This Word Works in UPSC Writing

One who receives what a scheme provides. The term carries a design question rather than being merely descriptive, because identifying beneficiaries requires a criterion, and every criterion produces two kinds of error that trade against each other: exclusion errors, where an eligible person is left out, and inclusion errors, where an ineligible person is admitted. Tightening eligibility to reduce inclusion error necessarily raises exclusion error, and the two are not equivalent in consequence, since an inclusion error costs money while an exclusion error may cost a life, which is the argument for erring towards inclusion in schemes concerning food and health. The vocabulary shift from beneficiary to rights-holder marks a real change rather than a rhetorical one, since a beneficiary receives what the state chooses to give while a rights-holder can enforce an entitlement, and the National Food Security Act and MGNREGA are drafted in the second register.