Poverty census sparks off debate over poor

The Union Cabinet has approved a headcount to assess the number of people below the poverty line (BPL) after a gap of nine years, but it could not end a debate over the methodology of counting the poor and extending social welfare activities like food and health to all.

On the one side of the debate are social activists and states, and on the other stands the Planning Commission.

Till the Ninth Five-Year Plan, the Planning Commission used to base its poverty estimates on the basis of a census on BPL families, but the tenth and eleventh plans were based on the findings of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on consumption expenditure. The problem arose after the Union government scrapped the system of ration cards and replaced it with the targeted public distribution system from 1997.

The Right to Food Campaign, an informal network of food activists, went to the Supreme Court in 2001 to ask for making right to food as the fundamental right.

The case is still pending in the court. Other arguments of the campaign like its objections to the parameters used in the 2002 BPL census were merged in this case only.

Food activists questioned the yardsticks like the number of garments used by a person to see whether he is the poor or not. Their argument was that in cold areas, people will use more garments and that does not make them any less poor.

In 2004, the court stayed the census. After an agreement with the petitioners and the government, it was decided that the next census will be conducted under the monitoring of court-appointed commissioners.

However, the government did not come out with the BPL census in 2006, despite a court order, activists of the campaign said. Since the BPL census of 2002 was mired in litigation, the Planning Commission started basing poverty estimates on the basis of NSSO survey and not actual census from the tenth plan onwards. The NSSO survey is based on the consumption pattern.

On the basis of it, the Planning Commission has taken Rs 15 a day per capita expenditure to be a threshold for counting poor in the rural areas and Rs 20 in the urban areas.

However, the actual number of the BPL people was expected to be identified by state governments after the Centre approves a census. They may use the parameters of the Centre or not.

Here comes the dispute, as the number of beneficiaries identified by states is much higher than what the Planning Commission estimates.

From the 2002-03 financial year (when the 10th Five-Year Plan started) onwards, the Planning Commission considers 65.2 million families as BPL, while the state governments estimate them to be over 110 million, based on the ration cards issued.

The Planning Commission said if states estimated higher number of people as the poor, they should bear the financial burden of social welfare activities to the poor in excess of 65.2 million families.

Biraj Patnaik , principal advisor to the Supreme Court commissioners on the Right to Food Act, told Business Standard that first of all the Right to Food Campaign does not understand why should there be any cap on providing food, health and other social services to the people.

But, given that the Planning Commission might not agree to do away with the cap, he said the limit itself is very low — Rs 15 a day per capita expenditure for rural areas and Rs 20 for urban.

In fact, the Supreme Court recently asked the Planning Commission to explain the rationale behind its estimation of poor people. It questioned the plan panel’s yardstick of fixing per capita per day consumption expenditure in rural and urban areas as the line for estimates.

“This is absurd as per capita per day expenditure according to the Planning Commission also includes expenditure on health, education and food and all other consumption items. Even if this number is updated to Rs 25 per day per capita for rural areas and Rs 31 for urban, then too, it is unrealistic and will exclude number of the actual poor. In reality, this is starvation line, not a poverty line,” said Patnaik.

Principal Advisor to the Planning Commission and former chief statistician, Pronab Sen, explained that the BPL census was meant to identify people who would get BPL cards, while the Planning Commission’s figures are meant to estimate the poverty both at central and state levels for effective distribution of resources.

The data churned out from the census survey is not used for estimation of poverty by the Planning Commission as it is not comparable and different states have different cut-offs for poverty.

In the latest census, approved by the Cabinet, some 200,000 enumerators will go to every household with a set of questions to which answers and replies might vary vastly not only between states, but also among regions.

However, NSSO uses a set of staff specifically trained to ask the same set of questions irrespective of language and region over and over again to get a comparable set of estimates.

“A survey can only be used for estimation, but census is an actual identification of the beneficiaries,” Sen explains.

He said many times states had different cut-offs for poverty, which is not at all comparable. The idea behind the BPL census is that the central government allocated its resources based on its cut offs, and if states have anything over this number, then it is their responsibility to bear the burden of welfare schemes for the excess number.

The new methodology for the rural census would divide the rural poor into three sections. One set of the population would be included in the BPL category, while another set of people — the economically affluent but socially deprived — would be excluded from the BPL category.

The third set would be enumerated on the basis of seven socio-economic parameters.

The urban population would be enumerated on the basis of three criteria — residential status, social vulnerability and occupational vulnerability. Criteria to exclude households from the BPL list would include ownership of two, three or four-wheeled motor vehicles, and landline phones.

Right to Food Campaign activists said parameters were better than the one used in the 2002 census, but they object to some of them. Patnaik said a telephone booth owner could be a poor, but because he has landline connection, he would be excluded from the BPL family. Similarly, a person may use a two-wheeler for his self-employment and may be poor, but would still be counted as not poor by the census.