BPL census leads to unfair distribution of benefits: Bihar

The UPA government may be seeking to get rid of the controversy over a renewed ceiling for the poverty line, but many states are in no mood to accept the ongoing BPL census. Topping them is Bihar, which is all set to oppose the exercise in a meeting of the National Development Council on October 22.

Patna’s main issue is the difference in the BPL census and the routine decadal census. It is because the latter counts individuals than households -- unlike the other. This, the JD(U)-BJP regime believes, leads to unfair distribution of benefits to families irrespective of their size.

So sensitive are the Bihar government on the issue of individual entitlements that it has already rejected the Food Security Bill. As a lasting solution to the problem, it has proposed the setting up of a national commission to conduct the BPL census in all states. The present BPL census, though delinked from the poverty line, does not still address the issue of individual head-count as well as setting up of an impartial central commission for the BPL census on the lines of the Election Commission, for which Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is campaigning.

Just as the poll body keeps the voter list updated, the commission is expected to keep the BPL beneficiary list updated all the time.

A senior Bihar government official, explaining the regime’s stand on individual head-count, says the state found that the average family size as per the census was six, while the family size as per the BPL census in Bihar was 3.98. Families tend to split themselves to ensure they get more ration cards. Thus, the family size reduces in BPL census.

“This fraudulence,” adds the official, “is forced on the public by the government’s BPL method of targeting families rather than individuals for benefits.”

Again, the BPL census conducted every five years and now being conducted after 2002 (almost nine years later), does not take into account the changes that families or individuals go through even as the benefits or lack of benefits continue unchanged, point out Bihar state officials. “A youth may get a good job, or the breadwinner may die and a well to do family may plunge into poverty. These things are not taken into account,” says another official.

The Bihar government, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and to Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, says the problem can be solved only by constituting a national commission like the poll body.

Such a panel should conduct the BPL census, according to Bihar government officials. It should be constantly updating the list of the poor. “A state would never be fair in counting the poor, just as it would not be fair in conducting its own elections,” points out an official.

The current BPL census is a recipe for more confusion, according to Bihar government sources. Notes one of them: “What is the point collecting data now when you have not decided on what you propose to do with it? You should have a clear-cut approach. Then everyone will accept it.”

Minister Ramesh has already accepted the state’s proposal. “We are hoping that the expert committee set up by the ministry would take a decision in line with our demand,” adds a Bihar government official.