People's Democracy

BPL Census: Will it Help the Poor?

Brinda Karat

THE BPL Census 2011 for rural areas will start in a few selected states beginning with Tripura in the month of June. The numbers of poor in each state have already been decided by the Planning Commission. For example regardless of how many poor people are identified as being poor in Tripura after the BPL census, only 49 per cent (see states list below) will be given BPL cards. Thus the intrinsic flaw  remains: the Planning Commission decides the numbers (poverty quota) in each state on the basis of their dubious estimates while the rural development ministry and its counterparts in the state identify who is to be included in those numbers. In a country with vast numbers of poor such as India, counting the poor often becomes an exercise to undercount and divide the poor to suit the wholly inhuman policy of targeting of what should be universal rights. But since this is an intrinsic part of the present economic policy framework it is necessary to look at the actual design of the census.

The rural BPL questionnaire is available while the urban BPL questionnaire is yet to be finalised. After the widespread criticism of the earlier questionnaires being used by the rural development ministry to identify the poor, the government gave an assurance on the floor of parliament to rectify the problems.

An elaborate exercise including a pilot study of over 260 villages on a new questionnaire had been conducted. But the end result is far from satisfactory. Except for the removal of a few absolutely objectionable questions in the 2002 questionnaire such as the number of meals eaten in a day, the number of sarees owned with a ranking to get you into BPL category only if you ate once a day or owned one saree, the design for the identification of the poor is highly questionable.

The design includes an automatic exclusion category and an automatic inclusion category which are new additions to the design. It however retains the ranking system for the rest. In the 2002 BPL questionnaire there were 13 questions each with a score of 0-4 with a total score of 0-52 with 0 denoting the most poor. In the present questionnaire of seven questions there are seven questions with a 0-7 score with 7 denoting the most poor.

EXCLUSION

CATEGORY

An easily verifiable exclusion category for the BPL census would be unexceptionable given the reality of social and economic inequalities in rural India and the existence of the rural rich, big landlords and farmers, big traders and contractors. But the present criteria seems to be geared to stretching the exclusion category to a much higher percentage than is the actual case. It is reported that the “target” for exclusion is around 30 per cent of the rural population which was around the percentage identified in the pilot study on the present 13 point exclusion category. In the exclusion list there can be no objection to the exclusion of government employees, income tax payees, tractor owners or owners of kisan credit cards with a credit of 50,000 rupees. But why should owners of two wheelers be bracketed with tractor owners and be automatically excluded. Why should owners of landline phone be excluded when as it is known many SC/ST families or disabled persons coming in vulnerable social categories may have a landline phone booth allotted to them in the village. Incidentally with the advent of mobile phones these village booths are running at losses.  But even worse is the automatic exclusion of peasants with 2.5 acres of irrigated land who own a tubewell.  With hugely fluctuating peasant incomes, with large debt burdens on poor peasant households, with the vagaries of weather and conditions of drought or floods such an automatic exclusion would be doing a 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, why should they be automatically excluded? 

The automatic exclusion list is unfair and should be rectified. In any case, it has been shown through experience both in India such as in Tamilnadu and in many other countries, that self-exclusion of those who do not require the subsidy benefit turns out be much more accurate and fair. Moreover an automatic exclusion criteria makes sense only when the rest of the population is automatically included as eligible for the social security guarantee, but this is not the case in the present census.

On the contrary, the five point automatic inclusion category is in fact so absurd and narrow that it is unlikely to cover even five per cent of the rural poor. Destitute people have been defined as those living on alms and 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, will not be included as destitute as they do not “beg.” Another strange category for automatic inclusion is “legally released bonded labourers.” If the worker runs away from bondage, then presumably the worker is not “legally released” and has no right to be automatically included. The others include: “households without shelter, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups”

This five point automatic inclusion category makes a mockery of social realities. It does not mention any social categories such as SC/ST, disabled, widows, casual manual workers as it should do.

RANKING

SYSTEM

The most problematic part of the BPL questionnaire is the retention of the concept of ranking based on seven questions.  With such a narrow automatic inclusion criteria, 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 the actual conditions. Suppose you are a tribal family of five members, one adult woman Mina Usendi, one female senior citizen, one 17 year old boy and two polio affected girls, with half a bigha of land having to do manual work to survive. How would you be marked in the seven point questionnaire which would make you eligible or ineligible for a BPL card?

Question1: “Houses with one room with kutcha walls and roof.” Since within the small plot of land you have erected a kutcha house with a kutcha roof with two small rooms (not one) on the first question you will score 0.

Question 2: “Household with no adult member between age 16 to 59”. Since you are 35 years old and therefore adult, on the second question also you score 0.

Question 3: “Female headed family with no adult male member between age 16 to 59.” Although you are a female, and you head your family, since your eldest child is a 17 year old boy, you will get a 0 rank.

Question 4: “Household with any disabled member and no able bodied member.” You have two children who are disabled, suffering from polio, but since you are able bodied you get 0 on this question.

Question 5: “SC/ST households” Since you are a tribal you will get 1 on this marker.

Question 6: “Households with no literate adult above 25 years.” Since you are 35 years old and have studied upto Class 4, you are literate and therefore will get a 0.

Question 7: “Landless households deriving the major part of their income from manual casual labor.” Since you have 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 0.

Therefore on a score of 7 a tribal, female headed household depending on casual manual labour, will score a 1 on a score of 7.

This data will be put up in the panchayat office and will be made public in the gram sabha so that claims and objections can be filed. However since her details have been filled up correctly, Mina Usendi files no objections.

So will Mina Usendi with a score of 1 get a BPL card?

Clearly the questionnaire itself is so designed as to ensure that only a small percentage of the poor can score the highest or near highest marks. This can also be used politically by the proponents of the current framework of neo-liberal policies to claim that low scores on the 0-7 list show that the number who could be graded really poor are going down. The basic problem with the ranking system is that it wants to create confusion over the concept of poverty and create multiple divisions within the poor. It’s like trying to distinguish between the "poor", "very poor", "very very poor", "extremely poor" and so on. The only purpose that this serves is to identify a small segment of the population as "extremely poor" and by implication characterise the rest of the "poor" as "not so poor". This is the classic way neoliberal policymakers make poverty disappear. You are no longer poor because you are not as poor as the poorest of the poor!  

The rural development ministry and related departments at the state level have the job of identifying the poor according to the seven point questionnaire but the numbers who will be recognised as being poor is determined by poverty estimates and the “caps” on numbers of poor 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 Bengal the cut-off score may be 4. All those who have scored below 4 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 4 may not get into the BPL category because to suit the “cap’ of the Planning Commission, the cut-off score in Madhya Pradesh may be 5 as there may be many more families with a score of 5-7 than there are in Bengal. This is the terror of cut-off lines.

In this scenario it is most unlikely that Mina Usendi with a low score of 1, will get a BPL card.

CONGRUENT

STRATEGIES

The questionnaire of the BPL census fits nicely in to the current NAC drafts on the food security bill. Having given up the most logical and only fair and just basis for food security, namely a universal system of food security, the national advisory council which includes many members of the Right to Food campaign, itself has suggested new forms of targeting such as “priority” groups of 46 per cent which is what the Planning Commission has accepted. Another suggestion is that of geographical targeting. The NAC also suggests a “social inclusion approach under which certain vulnerable social and economic categories of persons are identified”, thus making way for the fraudulent “automatic inclusion” criteria of the BPL census. These are also more or less the categories suggested in the Supreme Court orders which involves the public interest litigation moved by the PUCL and others. But the congruence does not end here. The recent World Bank report entitled Social Protection for a Changing India arguing strongly against a universal system also advocates as alternatives, geographical targeting as well as “targeted groups.”

The present BPL census questionnaire is designed to once again narrow down the identification of the poor to suit the wholly arbitrary and utterly unfair estimates of poverty handed out by the Planning Commission (see list below). The new design itself is faulty and both the exclusion and inclusion categories follow the same aim. The continuation of the ranking system is adding insult to the injuries of the poor in India who like Mina Usendi will be denied a BPL card. It can be safely said that this entire census exercise is not to help the poor, but on the contrary to further deny them a fair share in national resources.