The impending BPL Census exercise will not help the poor; on the contrary, it will further deny them a fair share in national resources.
The BPL, or Below Poverty Line, Census 2011 for the rural areas will start in select States this month. In a country such as India with vast numbers of the poor, counting the poor often becomes an exercise in undercounting and dividing them, to suit the wholly inhuman policy of targeted provision of what should be universal rights. But since this is an intrinsic part of the present neoliberal framework, it is necessary to look at the actual design of the census. After the earlier questionnaires that were used to identify the poor faced widespread criticism, the government had promised a change. But except for the removal of a few absolutely objectionable questions that were in the 2002 questionnaire, the 2011 questionnaire remains problematic. The 2002 questionnaire included questions on the number of meals one ate each day and the number of saris owned: you got into the BPL category only if you ate a meal once a day, or owned one sari. These questions have now been removed.
The 2011 questionnaire includes an automatic exclusion category and an automatic inclusion category — new additions to the design. It, however, retains the ranking system for the rest, who will make up the majority of the rural population. The 2002 BPL questionnaire had 13 questions, each with a score of 0-4. The total score ranged from zero to 52, with zero denoting the most poor. The 2011 questionnaire has only seven questions. It has a 0-7 score, with seven denoting the most poor.
Exclusion
An easily verifiable exclusion category for the BPL Census would be unexceptionable, given the reality of social and economic inequalities in rural India. But the present criteria seem geared to stretching the 13 categories that would qualify for automatic exclusion to a much higher percentage of the total. There can be no objection to the exclusion of government employees, income tax payees, those who own tractors, or those who hold kisan credit cards with a credit provision for Rs. 50,000. But the list “automatically excludes peasants with 2.5 acres of irrigated land who own a tubewell.” With hugely fluctuating incomes, large debt burdens on poor peasant households, vagaries of the weather, droughts or floods, such automatic exclusion would amount to meting out grave injustice to a large section of rural India.
Another questionable exclusion is that of a household with “a non-agricultural enterprise registered with the government.” Even micro-enterprises run by women's self-help groups, for example, are registered with the government. So are many others, and why should they be automatically excluded? There are other such examples.
The experience in Tamil Nadu, for example, has shown that self-exclusion of those who do not require the subsidy benefit turns out be more accurate and fair than otherwise. Moreover, automatic exclusion criteria make sense when the rest of the population is automatically included. But this is not the case in the present BPL Census design.
Inclusion
On the contrary, the five-point automatic inclusion category is so absurdly narrow that it is unlikely to cover even 5 per cent of the rural poor. Destitute people have been defined as those living on alms: they will be in the automatic inclusion list. But if, for example, a family of two senior citizens who are forced to work, say, four or five days a month just to survive, they will not be included as destitute as they do not “beg.” Others include “households without shelter, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups, legally released bonded labourers.” Presumably, if the worker has run away from bondage he or she is not legally released and therefore does not deserve automatic inclusion. Even social categories such as Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the disabled, widows, and casual manual workers are not automatically included.
Ranking
With such a narrow set of automatic inclusion criteria being applied, the large mass of the rural poor will be marked poor or non-poor through a ranking system. The questions are odd and have little connection with actual conditions. Suppose you are a tribal family of five members — Mina Usendi, aged 35, her mother aged 58, a 17-year-old boy and two polio-affected girls; owning half a bigha of agricultural land but doing manual work to survive. How would you be marked in the seven-point questionnaire that would make you eligible or ineligible for a BPL card?
Question 1: “Houses with one room with kutcha walls and roof.” Since within the small plot of land that you own, you have erected a kutcha house with a kutcha roof with two small rooms (not one), on the first question you will score zero.
Question 2: “Household with no adult member between age 16 to 59.” Since you are 35 years old and therefore an adult, on the second question also you score zero.
Question 3: “Female headed family with no adult male member between age 16 to 59.” Although you are a woman, and you head your family, since your eldest child is a 17-year-old boy, you will get a zero rank.
Question 4: “Household with any disabled member and no able bodied member.” You have two children who are disabled, affected by polio. But since you are able-bodied you get zero on this question.
Question 5: “SC/ST households.” Since you are a tribal, you will get the score one on this marker.
Question 6: “Households with no literate adult above 25 years.” Since you are 35 years old and have studied up to Class 4, you are literate and therefore will again get a zero.
Question 7: “Landless households deriving the major part of their income from manual casual labour.” Since you own half a bigha of land, even if it is dry and unproductive, even though you work from morning to night as a casual manual worker, you will still get a zero.
Therefore, someone like Mina Usendi, a tribal woman heading a family, who depends on casual manual labour to survive, will get just one point on a score of seven.
This is just one example of how the method of ranking and also the questionnaire are bound to ensure that only a small percentage of the poor can score the highest or near-highest marks. It is like trying to distinguish between the ‘poor,' ‘very poor,' ‘very very poor,' ‘extremely poor,' and so on. This is the classic manner in which neoliberal policymakers make poverty “disappear.” You are no longer poor, because you are not as poor as the poorest of the poor!
Terror of cut-off marks
The Ministry of Rural Development and related departments at the State level have the job of identifying the poor according to the seven-point questionnaire. But the number of people who will be recognised as being poor is determined by poverty estimates, and the “caps” on numbers of the poor as determined by the dubious methods and assessments of the Planning Commission.
Thus, for example, to get 42 per cent, which is the poverty “cap” set for West Bengal, the cut-off score may be four. Those who score below four will be deprived of the card. The cut-off for each State will differ. A person in Madhya Pradesh who has the same score of four may not get into the BPL category. This is because, in order to suit the “cap” of the Planning Commission, the cut-off score in Madhya Pradesh may be five as there may be many more families with a score of 5-7 than there are in West Bengal. This is the terror of cut-off lines.
In this scenario it is most unlikely that Mina Usendi, with a low score of one, will get a BPL card.
The BPL Census is designed to suit the wholly arbitrary and utterly unfair State-wise “caps” on poverty that have been set by the Planning Commission. It can be safely said that this entire census exercise is not meant to help the poor such as Mina Usendi, but on the contrary to further deny them a fair share in national resources.
(Brinda Karat is a Member of Parliament, and a member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India-Marxist.)
Keywords: BPL Census, automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion
Comments:
The Congress Party devices all methods to make people poor permanently. This is one such method.These kind of surveys are planned to show progress of the Government and not to improve the quality of life of the poor.But if one is prepared to bribe the survtor he/she will be included as a BPL person/family. Every form or procedure devised by the government helps to get bribes for the government servant. It is in their blood.
'You are no longer poor,because you are not as poor as poorest of poor'- this line has lot of meaning in itself. this line can be interpret in two ways. The first one that Govt aims to help the poorest of the people. This is the nice thing, because if it will include so many people than it may become difficult to implement the policy. And poorest of the poor deserve first to be included. So being poor is only relative thing. If the person who is not poor today may become poor in furure if all the person poorer than him move up in the economical ladder. The helping of poorest of poor people is good. But the second thing is that rather than identifying poor based on relativeness, they should be identified by economical resources and social condition. May be the percentage of poor in later method will be more but at least we will be aware of our country condition. Today we say that India is developing, economy is growing with more than 8 % and so many positive things. therefore it is also necessray to see the another face of India. The advantage ofseeing this face is that some good leaders may device some policies or at least the poor India will become a matter of concern. I know that most of people are agree that India is growing but they don't know that poor is becoming more poor day by day. So poor should be identified based on basic human need. A meal in a whole day or a single sari is the condition of poor but twice meal in a day and two sari is also showing poorness, in a country of GDP with more than 8 %. So limit should be raised to identify the poor. Because the strength of nation or a person is to know its weakness.
Rightly and very lucidly described
Dear Brinda karat: Identification of BPL family in Araria District of Bihar is just a Joke. In Panchayat Dehti, Block Palasi, District Araria, people having 20 Bigha land is identified and categorized under BPL. However the poor of poorest are left untouched. The NREGA card, RSBY card is distributed to rich farmers against real benificiary. The Mukhya of Panchayat took bribe and done the same. Hence I request CPM to look the issues at the ground level. The present Definition of Porverty is not justified at all.
Very nice artical with technical description.
There is clearly no question that the ranking system definitely needs to be addressed. But, the automatic inclusion system looks fair and does not need to include everybody mentioned in the article. They say a proverb about teaching a person to fish and feeding the person.. Through the number of reservations available in almost all the fields, an attempt to address the unequal opportunity problem is being made. But, the government should not be expected to replace a family. Taking care of the old, or disabled, supporting each other are all expected to be the responsibilities of the family. Stronger families are the foundation to our robust economy as opposed to the recession prone western economies. The government would be doing the 'Feeding the fish' if it starts doing this.. On the other hand, as is being done through the BPL census, the government should focus on 'Teach fishing' by empowering them by providing opportunities rather than just monetary assistance.
One thing I've understood clearly that in India poor are nor enumerated by their poverty but willingness of the government to accept the poor as poor.
GOI and its agencies are the world's foremost experts in tying themselves and the populace into convoluted knots - the purpose here is to ensure that poor remains poor & preferably BPL {Below Poverty Line}. Ms Karat - with whose ideologies I am totally opposed to - has brought out the sheer perfection of this totally idiotic exercise by the GOI. Fundamentally, there are two critical parameters here - i) daily average income ii) daily calories' intake. For many years, US$ 1.00 was considered as the Benchmark for BPL; now the IMF & WB advise US$ 1.25 - 2.00 per day as the BPL benchmark. By the former yardstick, it was estimated by Merrill Lynch-Cap Gemini in 2009 that 460 millions of Indians are BPL. The $ 2.00 mark will see fully 900 millions below that line. These are reasonable benchmarks & GOI + States must evolve policies and implement them to elevate/ subsidise/ motivate BPL Citizens to sustain, come up. On the second criterion, GOI has been shifting the goal posts - this was been downgraded from 2500 cal to 1900 cal over the years. Which brilliant mind eveolved the continually declining calorie intake as the standard is hard to fathom. The fact remains that all the NREGA schemes are useless unless the GOI and the States ensure that the Minimum Wages guaranteed in such schemes are actually paid ALL ACROSS THE COUNTRY. The much mailgned CAG stated its statutory audit that only 3.6% {YES 3.6% NOT 36%} of the funds are effectively used. That is the start; thereafter the PDS must be completely streamlined to ensure near perfect deliveries. Absolutely possible as - without getting into politics - Ms Jayalalitha demonstrated during 2001-06. It is also not costly at all provided the Governance is tightened. BUT the presnt exercise will end up in showing that only 14-15% are BPL whereas, in reality, almost 5.5 times that number are BPL.
I agree to a large extent with Miss Karat, a distinguished member of the CPI. However, how does one determine the true extent of poverty in the country expressed as hard numbers? Surely the concept of poverty is subjective, but I do agree with the idea of self-exclusion, if the budget can cover the cost. No doubt there will be unscrupulous individuals who would claim their 'share' even though they are quite comfortable without it. We have seen how even the super rich cannot resist the temptation of enriching themselves via ill-gotten or at the very least morally dishonest wealth. Nevertheless, it is always good to err on the side of ensuring that the coverage across the spectrum of the poor is as wide as practically possible.
How poor is poor enough? If you ask this question to the Planning Commission of India, you might be highly disappointed at the response. Some people may be dying out of hunger, heat wave in the scorching summer, or chilling cold in the winter or even living in an abject state in the railway platform, because of lack of proper housing facilities, but according the Planning Commission's criteria, they might not be considered poor enough.
Poverty is a widespread and well acknowledged menace in India. To know how poor India is, on average, you don't need to read the complicated official reports. Just look at the people and the places around and you will have good grasp of the situation. However, when it comes to the Government accounts, the abjectness of the poverty situation seems to be grossly underestimated and even ignored in many circumstances.Reacting to a petition by Peoples' Union of Civil Liberties, the Supreme Court of India recently asked the Planning Commission: "You (India) are a powerful economy. Yet, starvation deaths are taking place in many parts of the country. What a stark contradiction in our approach. How can there be two Indias?" The apex court also challenged the Commission's approach to estimating poverty level among the masses. As the Economic Times reported, "The Supreme slammed the Planning Commission, asking its Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to explain how was the percentage of people living below poverty line (BPL) fixed at 36 percent and how has their purchasing power remained unchanged since 1991. Responding to the apex court's queries, the Planning Commission disclosed its criteria for determining a poor. According to the Commission, an urban Indian spending more than Rs 578 a month ($13) - roughly Rs 20 (less than 50 cents) a day would exceed its limit for the poverty line. The figures are even lower for rural India. If a villager spends more than 15 rupees a day on the entire gamut of basic needs including food, clothing, shelter, and the villager cannot be termed as poor enough and will not be entitled to receive benefits meant for poor. Based on these consumption levels, the commission has declared that only 41.8% of the rural population is poor and a mere 25.7% of the urban Indians need food, shelter and social benefits from the government. These criteria for persons living below poverty line (BPL) explain very well how half of India may starve to death but the Government may say India is not poor. By these measures, most beggars will find it difficult to make it to the list of poor people. The Planning Commission's criteria of daily spending of Rs 20 for the Urban dwellers and Rs 15 for the Rural people as an indicator for poverty not only shows their lack of concern for people but also shows their unawareness about the cost of living in the country. How can a person afford a nutrition content of 2400 calories from a meager 15 rupees (about 35 cents)?
Where members of the Planning Commission would be spending Rupees 1500 to 2000 a day, if the other guys can spend merely a hundredth of what they spend, the latter ceases to be poor! What kind of criterion is this? It seems quite strange how a body like the Planning Commission of India could come up with such unrealistic criteria for persons living within the BPL level. This criterion grossly underestimates or rather ignores other expenses like housing, clothing, and medication. Where in Urban India one can find housing for Rs 600 a month? The Planning Commission fails to account for the very basic amenities of life for the poor. This is highly disappointing, as the criteria for deciding BPL fail to capture the cost of bare minimum amenities for survival. If we push the criterion up to the international standard spending of $ 1 (PPP adjusted) a day, the Planning Commission estimates about 45% of Indian Population is extremely poor. If the daily income per head is $ 2 then the family is described as poor and about 80% of Indian Population is poor by this criterion.
So what can one think of the Planning Commission's stand: Is it sheer ignorance of the reality or a calculated strategic measure? If the level of poverty can't be reduced, lower the criteria to such an extent that most of the poverty will remain underestimated and hence unreported and ultimately, the problem will be ignored or at least it will not draw as much attention as it otherwise would. But not everyone is as ignorant as the planning Commission's statisticians. The Supreme Court once again has noticed the inadequacy of the criteria for measuring the BPL level. The Court has directed the commission to re-evaluate its criteria for measuring poverty across the nation.Thanks to the Supreme Court for intervening in this case. Otherwise, poor people would be dying hungry and shelter-less, while the Planning Commission would say they are not poor enough!
i appreciate the study done by Ms Brinda Karat. It is a critical analysis of situation.she has put her case very objectively with reason.i must say she should raise this serious issue in parliament and make government to change system of counting BPL people.i must say the people should be given the opportunity to prove that they are poors.
Brinda, I regret your's and your party's ostrich like attitude. why do you keep running down initiatives from the govt. I agree some short comings will be there, but to say that the govt is always anti poor and not run a program at all is sheer cowardice and shirking your own responsibility as an MP. Go back to parliament and in a democratic way ask for debate and corrective measures. Give solutions not biased opinions. If you have any solution that is.
Poverty cannot be measured using the age old calculator!!. A person is not poor because he gets paid less than others, but because basic needs are not affordable to him/her anymore! What is the point in getting an income just above the BPL threshold and not able to find a school or health care that is affordable?!
Analysis is very good. She can raise a question in Parliament on this. But she did not suggest a viable solution. Anyways hope they discuss it in Parliament and come out with a fair solution.
Isn't our tax Rupees going into assisting the poor, or at least incentivizing them? If this is the case then their will be an allocated amount dedicated to this cause. Then if the number of poor benefitting from this BPL census is reducing, where is the rest of the allocated amount directed? I hope not to the Government (or rather the politicians)? Then it becomes an incentive for the Government to continually reduce this number (of actual poor people) in the Country.
Whilst there are a lot of valid points raised, automatic inclusion of anyone who belongs to the SC/ST group is not a feasible one. There are many households within those groups who have access to a very large resource/asset base. It might be rational to have automatic inclusion of these groups, if it is also equally possible for automatic 'exclusion' (based on wealth / educational achievements) criteria to supersede the inclusion criteria.