NEW DELHI – India will send billions of dollars in social welfare money directly to its poor under a new program inaugurated Tuesday, aiming to cut out the middlemen blamed for the massive fraud that plagues the system.

Previously officials only handed out cash to the poor after taking a cut – if they didn’t keep all of it for themselves – and were known to enroll fake recipients or register unqualified people.

The new program would see welfare money directly deposited into recipients’ bank accounts and require them to prove their identity with biometric data, such as fingerprints or retina scans.