Socio-Economic Census to replace poverty line

Nod to Bose panel suggestions for identifying beneficiaries, resource allocation for rural schemes

Ahead of Union Budget 2017-18, the Centre has accepted the recommendations of a panel for replacing the poverty line, as the main instrument for identification of beneficiaries and transferring of funds for social schemes in rural areas, with the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC).

The recommendations, which officials said have been accepted, would make the SECC database the primary source for identification of beneficiaries for any rural scheme and in future programmes.

SECC was begun in 2011, the first national census to collect caste-based data since 1931. Its results were issued in early 2015, though not on caste component, except for scheduled castes and tribes. 

Budget 2017-18 could extensively use the database to not only launch targeted schemes and programmes but monitor their on-ground effectiveness.

The panel was headed by former finance secretary Sumit Bose and also had rural development secretary Amarjeet Sinha; Mahendra Dev, director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research; Rinku Murgai, economist, World Bank; Himanshu, associate professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and Manoranjan Kumar from the ministry.

“Through the SECC database, we know there are around 800,000 disabled persons in rural India who don’t have an adult family member to look after them. The Centre can use this information to frame extensively targeted programmes,” a senior official explained.

The database over the years would also act as a social registry that would help in monitoring whether the benefits which the government gave had helped people to come out of poverty.

SECC was meant to identify the rural poor and done through a door-to-door method. It had said that of the 179 million rural households, 0.9 per cent should be automatically included, being in the 'fully deprived' category. 

Another 87.3 mn households reported one or more deprivation factors — no adult member, landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual labour, etc.

The panel has said regular updation and verification of SECC data to eliminate discrepancies was needed.

“The database shows us that there are 6.8 million women-led households in rural India, with no male adult family member. The committee has favoured specific schemes targeted towards such households,” an official explained.

On social security pension schemes, the committee found that once these were aligned with the SECC, there were many ineligible members who got these.

“We annually spend over Rs 300,000 crore on various programmes targeted to rural India but it should show on the ground. Using SECC data as the primary source of information and deprivation will help us to do that,” the official explained.

The rural development ministry had already started using the SECC for identification of beneficiaries for the rural housing programme and the National Rural Livelihood Mission. Now on, all its programmes and allocations to states would be on the basis of the SECC.

The data showed 670,000 households in villages, 0.4 per cent of the 179.1 million rural households, lived through begging and charity in 2011. Another 400,000 or 0.2 per cent of rural families did it through ragpicking.

The number of households having the primary occupation of manual casual labour was 91.6 mn or 51.1 per cent of all families in villages. This category was the biggest on the parameters of sources of income in rural India.

Households having unirrigated land constituted 29.7 per cent of all families in the 56,000 identified gram panchayats.