Punjab doubled the phone budget from ₹34 crore to ₹69 crore by upgrading to 5G, then handed the phones to a completely different department. The 26,000 anganwadi workers they were bought for are now told to use their personal phones.
The Punjab government procured 28,515 high-end 5G-enabled smartphones at a cost of ₹69 crore under the Poshan Abhiyan nutrition scheme — nearly double the original ₹34 crore estimate after mysteriously upgrading specs from 4G to 5G. The phones were meant for anganwadi workers tracking child malnutrition across Punjab. Instead, the government diverted the entire lot to the Rural Development Department for a drug-and-socioeconomic census. The 26,000 nutrition workers who were supposed to get these phones are now conducting a separate massive door-to-door enrollment survey using their personal devices, compensated with a princely ₹25 per beneficiary. Officials defended the move by citing "convergence of schemes" — a bureaucratic term that apparently means "we bought you a gift and then regifted it."