july 2011 critique bpl census 2011 english

8/4/2019 July 2011 Critique Bpl Census 2011 English

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Why the 2011 BPL Selection Process has to be Opposed

(The 2011 BPL Survey is designed to further reduce and restrict welfare support for the poor. Poverty lines have

been designed to reduce the number of households eligible to receive any kind of welfare benefits while the

flawed selection process will leave out many poor households and select many less poor households as BPL. Use

of tablet computers, in the manner that is being brought in, will reduce transparency and community oversight.

The survey is likely to accord no priority to key deprived groups such as single women, persons with disability

and Dalit Christians & Dalit Muslims. Most significantly the survey is designed to leave out the small and

marginal producers (farmers, fishers, artisans) and vendors from the BPL list and deny them the little support

that ensures suicides apart - their continued existence in a globalised corporate dominated economy)

Over the last 20 years, ever since neo-liberalism became the official economic and foreign policy of

India, governments have been seeking to reduce the number of poor people receiving any public

welfare support. The stated reasons given for this drive have been principally around an expressed

need to reduce the subsidy burden on the government. Those trying to push for these drives have

also used various other pretexts such as the need to provide greater support to the poor through

better targeting of support, and have claimed that the changes they are proposing to the welfare

and social security system, will help plug inefficiencies, and prevent leakages from the system. But

the real reason behind such drives, has been greater corporate takeover of parts of the Indianeconomy that had been previously closed, restricted or simply unavailable for corporate interests.

Dismantling of the universal public distribution system and its replacement by a targeted system

(TPDS) was primarily aimed at compelling more and more people to be totally dependent on the

open market for their food needs, esp. cereals, pulses, and edible oil. Dismantling of free healthcare

systems and its replacement with priced healthcare services, even in government owned hospitals,

as well as the governments drive on premium-based health insurance, is principally targeted at

expanding corporate interests in the healthcare business, as well as in medical insurance. Voucher

based education support is targeted at both reducing the number of poor children who will be

eligible to enter a school where any significant teaching-learning activity happens, as well as at

expanding the market for those who seek corporate profits in the arena of education.

Targeting being the proverbial fig-leaf for these drives, governments carried out successive surveys

for identifying eligible poor (BPL-Below Poverty Line) households. But the government was more

interested in reducing the number of households given BPL Cards and actually cared little about

whether the real poor received those cards or not. This is obvious from the way the 2002 BPL survey

was designed and carried out. Interestingly, the government which defended the survey in 2002

when activists attacked it as anti-poor, has criticised it in its preface to the upcoming 2011 survey,

stating that the 2002 BPL Survey left out many poor Households and included non-poor households.

Each time a new survey is carried out, the number of eligible poor household is sought to be further

reduced on the claim that poverty has decreased significantly. The 1997 BPL survey was carried out

on the presumption that only about a third (36%) of Indias population was poor enough to be

eligible for welfare benefits. The 2002 BPL survey was based on the estimate that only about aquarter (26%) of Indias population was poor enough to be eligible. The official estimates of poverty

and hence the proportion of people eligible to receive any kind of welfare support would have been

brought down to negligible levels by the end of the 11th Plan (See Table 1).

In fact the chapter on growth and poverty, in the 9th

plan document (Volume - I, Chapter on Growth

Performance and Poverty) clearly outlined the shape of things to come. It estimated that poverty

level by the year (1996-97) preceding the launch of the 9 th plan was 29% and that it was likely to

come down drastically over the next few planning periods. So by the year (2001-02) preceding the


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10th

plan, the estimated poverty was likely

to be 17.7%, and by the year (2006-07)

preceding the launch of the 11th

plan this

was likely to be 9.2%. By the year (2011-

12) preceding the 12th

five year plan, the

figure was expected to come down to

4.4%.

The PDS of course would have been a

principal casualty of this planned

reduction in those eligible to access the

Targeted Public Distribution system. PDS

as we know it today, comprising of PDS

Shops where a certain quantity of

subsidised (fixed price) grains (principally

Wheat and Rice) can be purchased by

eligible households, could not have

survived a condition where the proportion

of poor households was less than 5%. Theoption that would have been put forward

(the 9th Plan Document did not have an

open mention of this though) would have been that instead of running these dedicated PDS outlets

catering to less than 5% of the population, it would be better to provide cash transfers or food

coupons in lieu of subsidised grain. Of course this total dismantling of PDS would have not only

meant the end of subsidised food for the poor, it would have also meant the end of governments

role in price stabilisation in the food grains market, and the end of Minimum Support Price based

procurement as we know it today.

However, the planned reduction in proportion of eligible households did not come about in the manner

expected. There were many reasons for this. The most important of these was that poverty simply did not go

down as imagined, in spite of all the statistical jugglery performed through the introduction of newmethodology of measuring consumption expenditure in the NSSO Surveys of 1999-2000 and 2004-05. The

introduction of the new methodology in 1999-2000 NSSO Survey showed a decline of poverty that was less

than what was expected in the 9th

five year plan document. By the 2004-05 NSSO Survey, there was a huge

margin of difference between the 9th Plan Expectations and the actual NSSO estimates as per any

methodology. The 9th

Plan expectation was that poverty would be 17.7% by 2001-02 and 9.2% by 2006-07.

By those standards poverty in 2004-05 should have been around 12 % to 13%. The actual estimates came

out to be 27.5% as per the Uniform Reference Period (URP) method that was comparable to 1993-94 NSSO

methodology. As per the Mixed Reference Period (MRP) methodology, comparable to the 1999-2000 NSSO

methodology, the estimate was 21.8%. This was approximately two times (a little more than that as per URP

and little less than that as per MRP) of what was expected in the 9th

plan document.

The second reason was that in spite of full spectrum defence of the 1999-2000 NSSO methodology by the

official economists, the change in methodology from URP to MRP was called in to question by a wide section

of academics and civil society. Poor people, as well as people who live close to them, of course did not have

to get in to academic arguments as they could easily see that the claimed reduction in poverty was a sick

joke. A reduction from 36% to 26% implies that 3 out of every 10 households that were poor in 1993-94 had

crossed the poverty threshold by 1999-2000. The writ petition on the 2002 BPL Census, under the Right to

Food Case in the Supreme Court, highlighted the issue further. This multiplied the already widespread

opposition to the statistical jugglery and underreporting of poverty. If such opposition had not come up to

challenge the government, it is quite possible that the methodology for estimating consumption would have

Table 1: Projection of State-wise Poverty Ratios

in the Perspective Period (per cent) : 9th

Plan, Volume I

Sl No State 1996- 97 2001 -02 2006- 07 2011- 12

1 A P 17.4 11.1 5.4 2.4

2 Assam 26.5 10.7 3.8 2.1

3 Bihar 44.1 27.5 14.1 6.5

4 Gujarat 17.1 9.1 3.9 1.35 Haryana 18.4 10.2 5.0 2.6

6 H P 22.4 14.0 7.3 3.1

7 Karnataka 30.7 17.9 8.7 3.5

8 Kerala 21.2 11.4 4.8 1.4

9 M P 33.4 22.0 12.8 6.8

10 Maharashtra 32.7 20.7 11.4 5.4

11 Orissa 40.2 22.9 10.8 4.6

12 Punjab 8.0 3.0 0.9 0.2

13 Rajasthan 20.3 10.9 4.7 1.5

14 Tamil Nadu 30.7 18.1 9.0 3.6

15 U P 32.5 21.9 12.9 6.9

16 West Bengal 25.1 13.5 6.3 2.9All India 29.9 18.0 9.5 4.4

All India(weighted) 29.0 17.7 9.2 4.4


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been tweaked further and computation of poverty line too would have been done in a manner that the

estimates of poverty took the course set for them in the 9th

plan.

The 2002 BPL Survey of course was opposed on two grounds. The first ground was of course the

manufactured reduction in the poverty estimates to be used, from 36% for 1997 to 26% for 2002. The other

issue was the ridiculous 13 point survey questionnaire that was un-verifiable and went against the interests

of the poor. The Supreme Court gave a stay on the finalisation of the BPL List as per the 2002 BPL Census andfinally the right to food campaign and the government mutually agreed to take off the stay if certain

conditions were met. One of them was that there would be no reduction in number of households

recognised as BPL. Another was to keep the BPL list open for inclusion and exclusion for the entire period of

the list, based on an application-verification system. A third was the formation of an Expert Group to advise

the government on the next BPL Survey (then planned for the 11th Plan). This Expert Group, initially under

the chairmanship of Sri M Shankar, finally gave its report, in August 2009, under the chairpersonship Sri N C

Saxena, Commissioner to the Supreme Court in the matter of Right to Food. The expert group suggested a

new methodology for identification of the poor, but also suggested that at least 50% of households in rural

areas be recognised as BPL. While saying this, it did mention that the proportion of households that should

be recognised as poor as per the minimum calorie intake standard (2400 Kcal per day in rural areas), laid

down by the government itself, was closer to 80%. But instead of paying heed to what this committee had to

say, the government used new poverty estimates suggested by another committee, the TendulkarCommittee, it had formed (this had nothing to do with the SC Judgement). It also changed the methodology

that the Saxena committee had suggested. Lets take a look at the implications of these two kinds of

departures from the Saxena Committee Report.

First lets look at the implications of the difference in proportion of households that the two committees

recommend as eligible for getting recognised as BPL. Here we can compare only the rural poverty levels as,

unlike Tendulkar, the Saxena Committee had not given any figures for urban poverty. While the Saxena

committee recommends that at least 50% of rural households be recognised as BPL, the Tendulkar

committee recommends 41.8%. The impact of this difference of 8.2% between the Saxena committee figures

and the Tendulkar committee figures is quite large at the national level, amounting to leaving out about 1.3

crore households from BPL entitlements. But for some states its even larger. For instance, for Odisha, the

difference is almost 25% (24%, i.e. 84.5% versus 60.8%) in terms of percentages and amounting to leavingout about 16 lakh households from BPL entitlements, i.e. three out of every ten poor households will be left

out of BPL list. The case of Jharkhand is even worse. While Saxenas estimate is 82.1%, Tendulkars estimate

is 51.6%, a difference of over 30%, implying 4 out of every 10 poor households will be left out. Uttarakhand

is the worst with the figures being 70.4% versus 35.1%, implying that every other (50%) poor household will

be left out of the BPL list. Bihar, Chhattisgarh and UP too have large deficits in the Tendulkar estimates

(75.1% versus 55.7% in Bihar; 73.2% versus 55.1% in Chhattisgarh; and 58.1% and 42.7% in UP). Madhya

Pradesh and West Bengal too have large differences (66.6 versus 53.6% for MP; and 51% versus 38.2% for

WB). While there is injustice to the poor at the national level, there is even more injustice to the poorest

states of the country.

While the Tendulkar committees estimation of poverty is higher than the earlier planning commission

estimates based on the 2004-05 NSSO survey, the estimates are still based on extremely low poverty lines.

The rural poverty line for 2004-05 at the all India level has been pegged at 14 rupees and 89 paisa. For

Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh, it is still lower at Rupees 13.30, 13.49, 13.59 and

13.61, respectively. In Pondicherry it is 12.85 rupees. At the national level, rural people at the poverty line,

i.e. not BPL, consume less than 25 grams of Dal per day, less than 50 ml of milk per day, and less than 15

grams of sugar per day. For a state like Orissa those consuming 18 grams of pulses per day, 20 mls of milk

per day, and 10 grams of sugar per day, are assumed to be not poor. At the Tendulkar Poverty line in rural

areas, people are still eating about one-sixth less than what they require as per governments own norms.

The committee cited that it has used the FAO figures for minimum calorie norms. But what they have


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actually used is the Minimum Dietary Energy Requirement (MDE) norm (1770 Kilocalories per day) for light

workers while the majority of Indians are moderate or heavy workers. Ideally they should have taken the

moderate worker norm for the urban areas (over 2000 Kilocalories by FAO standards) and heavy worker

norm for the rural areas (approximately 2400 Kilocalories by FAO standards). But the committee assumed

that most Indians are sedentary workers who do work sitting at a place, commute to work driving their own

car, and have machines for household work.

While calculating how many poor households would be left out of the BPL list on account of the use of

poverty estimates suggested by Tendulkar and not the one suggested by Saxena, the assumption was that

the identification of the poor households can be done with minimum error. But the governments final

methodology for BPL selection is likely to be quite error prone. These errors will flow from two sources. The

first, and perhaps the more significant source, of these errors would be the use of handheld computers

(tablet computers) instead of plain old paper. The use of tablet computers will ensure that most households

will not be able to understand whether their responses have been correctly entered in the device. Possibly

most enumerators too will not be able to comprehend the working of the tablet. In fact that is the reason

why the government has asked Bharat Electronics Limited to recruit tablet operators and each enumerator

will be accompanied by a data entry operator. Given the fact that the government is planning to deploy Asha

Karmis and Anganwadi Workers in the survey process, it is

highly unlikely that many such enumerators will be able toeven monitor whether the responses are being correctly

entered by the data entry operator. Most data entry

operator, on the other hand are likely to be from an urban

background without much rural exposure previous to the

survey process. Under such circumstances, its doubtful

whether responses can be elicited and recorded correctly.

To add insult to injury the government insists that the

respondent will certify at the end of the process that s/he

has understood the process completely and is satisfied

that the responses given by her/him are properly

recorded. The instruction manual helpfully suggests that in

case the respondent is illiterate, the enumerator will readout what has been entered and the respondent will certify

that what is entered is correct and duly affix her/his thumb

impression on the acknowledgement slip.

By signing or affixing her/his thumb impression on the

acknowledgement slip, the respondent will have agreed

that except for caste and religion related information,

everything else that has been shared can be put in to the

public domain. In the urban BPL survey, information is

sought on the HIV status of each member of every

household1. By signing off the no confidentiality clause,

isnt the household giving away the authority to the

government to disclose its HIV status in the public domain?

Why is this data even being collected when there is no

mention of automatic inclusion or even a deprivation indicator based score for persons living with HIV-AIDS

(PLHIV)?

1Its surprising to note that the chronic illness section that is part of the urban BPL survey is not part of the rural BPL

survey. Does chronic illness not impact poverty status in rural areas!

Certificate by the respondent:

1. I declare that all the informationprovided to the enumerator is true to

the best of my knowledge and belief.

2. I have seen the information recorded/the information has been read out to

me and I certify that they have been

entered correctly.

3. I am aware that the religion and Caste/Tribe declared by me will not confer

me any right to claim any Caste/ Tribe /

Community certificate.

4. I am aware that my personal/household level data, except religion

and Caste/Tribe will be published. I

give my consent / I do not give my

consent for the same*

I am aware that by not giving my consent

for publishing my data, I may not be

considered for benefits under the welfare

schemes of the Government.

Signature /Thumb impression of

Respondent with date ____________


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The survey process assigns no role to the PRIs or the Gram Sabha till the entire survey is over. This implies

that there will be no real time monitoring of the survey work by PRIs or the Gram Sabha. Ultimately of

course, the printed data sets for every household will be shared with the villagers and discussed at a

specially convened Gram Sabha. Here the problems of that dogged the Gram Sabhas for the 2002 BPL survey

will continue. In the 2002 Survey there were 13 selection-relevant questions per household. In a Gram Sabha

of 1,000 households, this meant that to do a proper check on the scores read out for every household, the

Gram Sabha would need at least 15 minutes. The overall time needed for 1,000 households would have been15,000 minutes i.e. verifying the data for all the households would require 8 hour long Gram Sabhas every

day for 31 successive days. No wonder the Gram Sabha process failed to make much of a difference and the

government itself now says that the 2002 BPL survey left out many poor households and included many non-

poor households. The 2011 survey will have more than 40 points per household that would require

verification for the purpose of confirming eligibility for Exclusion, Inclusion or Scoring. Can a Gram Sabha

process do justice to it unless it has been involved in the process from the very beginning so that it can

institute a real-time monitoring mechanism through the participation of villagers in the survey process itself?

The second source of errors comes from the exclusion / inclusion criteria and the survey questionnaire. The

Exclusion Criteria suggested by the Saxena Committee have been expanded and now include those owning

motorised two wheelers (a vegetable vendor with a second hand moped that s/he uses for transporting

vegetables from the village to the nearest market will be excluded for owning that moped), motorisedfishing boats, landline telephones, none of which essentially imply that a household has gone above the

poverty line. On the other hand the Inclusion Criteria suggested by the Saxena Committee have been

curtailed. So while the Saxena Committee suggested that all households headed by a Single Woman, a

Person with Disability, a Minor or a Mahadalit should be automatically included in the BPL list, the final

methodology has denied automatic inclusion to such households. While such households have been brought

under the deprivation indicators criteria2 but most of them will be denied any preference based on some

other countervailing criteria. For instance a household where a disabled single woman lives with her 16 year

old school-going son, will not be given any point for happening to be a single woman, or a person with

disability. A landless household where a 13 year old child is engaged in weaving to support his mother and

disabled father3, will get no points for being a child headed household, or being landless, or for the disability

of its only adult male member. A landless Dalit Muslim weaver will get no point for being Dalit (SC status and

deprivation mark restricted to only Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists) and no point for being landless.

While a large number of poor households will be denied BPL certification under such a survey, it is useful to

identify certain groups that are more likely to be excluded. In terms of occupational groups, these comprise

of farmers, fishers, weavers, other artisans, and small vendors. These people will be affected by various

kinds of exclusion indicators. The Fishers will be excluded due to the motorised boatcriteria, small vendors

by the motorised two-wheeler criteria, farmers by the water pump criteria4. Dalit Muslims and Dalit

Christians will be denied the preference they should have received as marginalised communities. Single

Women and Persons with Disability will suffer from the substitution of the automatic inclusion clause with

the restricted deprivation score. Mahadalit communities (especially in the two poorest states of Bihar and

2Deprivation Indicators ( 1 point per indicator thus a landless SC household with a one roomed kutcha house and

dependent on manual casual labour will get at least 3 points)

1. Households with only one room with kutcha walls and kutcha roof;2. Households with no adult member between age 16 to 59;3. Female headed households with no adult male member between age 16 to 59;4. Households with any disabled member and no able bodied adult member;5. SC/ST households;6. Households with no literate adult above 25 years;7. Landless households deriving the major part of their income from manual casual labour.

3This is a real life example from a weavers village in the Bargarh district of Odisha.

4(unlike the initial note of the government, the questionnaire only mentions ownership of a water pump and not a tube

well in addition as comprising the exclusion criteria)


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UP) will lose out due to denial of automatic inclusion. PLHIV (though they were not included in the Saxena

Committee automatic inclusion list) comprise a community that will have no automatic inclusion, no

deprivation point and yet face the risk of their HIV status being disclosed in the public domain. There are

SC/ST groups which have been demanding automatic inclusion whose demand has not been met.

The 2011 BPL Survey must also be looked at from the perspective of the coming changes in welfare support

restricted on the basis of BPL status. The government has stated that from 2012, the Kerosene subsidy willbe restricted to BPL households. Subsidised Electricity connections under Rajiv Jyoti scheme are already

restricted to BPL households. Thus a household falling out of BPL category will have access neither to

subsidised electricity nor to subsidised kerosene. Free medicines and subsidised healthcare at government

health facilities are restricted except in pioneering states like Rajasthan to BPL households. Pension for

widows is also restricted to BPL households. So while Indias social security system is grossly inadequate,

much of whatever does exist is restricted to BPL households. With so much dependent on the possession of

a BPL Card, no wonder there is so much corruption in the identification process. The new survey by reducing

verifiability of the survey process is an open invitation to malpractices.

Finally, the key victim of the new survey will be the small producers. We have already discussed how

farmers, fishers, weavers, other artisans, vendors etc. are going to be at the receiving end of the upcoming

BPL survey. This seems to be part of the overall design to displace these people from their traditional (oracquired) occupations as small producers or small traders. Apart from the direct impacts of a globalised

market, the small producers are already suffering from curtailment of various support programmes. The

2011 BPL survey will add more to the worries of these groups. From 2012, fertiliser subsidy will be restricted

to some farmers and there may be attempts to use a BPL kind of categorisation to do so. Transition to a Cash

Transfer system for fertilisers will also ensure that the general market prices will be higher. On the other

hand the governments insistence on changing the PDS to a cash transfer programme will threaten MSP

based procurement and reduce the prices farmers receive for their produce. There are supports to weavers,

such as support for a room for the loom, that are restricted to BPL households. There are supports to fishing

communities - such as support for purchase of boat and engine, support for housing and for diesel subsidy

that are restricted to BPL households. Support for self employment programmes under the SGSY programme

is restricted to women with BPL cards. The impact of withdrawal of support to small producers and vendors

on the basis of their getting out of the new BPL List is going to result in rapid increase in the domination oflarge corporations in such sectors where the small producers still account for bulk of the production. The last

deprivation question (Is the family both landless as well as a manual casual labourer?) is the question that

gives away the intention of the government. A household is not very likely to be identified as BPL if it has

land or if its occupation is anything other than a manual casual labour. The small producer is not something

that the government would want to survive for a long time. If the end can be hastened through taking away

the little supports that the government provides them, this government will ensure that it happens.

july 2011 critique bpl census 2011 english

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