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By Aparna Pallavi Around 250,000 families have protested against the rigging of the below poverty line (BPL) lists in Maharashtra's Vidarbha districts, which are in the grip of a severe agricultural crisis, and where inclusion in the list is essential for the poor to access their entitlements
What do you get when you add pre-determined results to incompetence and rampant corruption? If the case happens to be the recent BPL census held in Vidarbha, you get a whopping 2.5 lakh-plus complaints and a very high-strung administration. The Vidarbha BPL list released recently has all the appearances of having been ‘fixed’. A mammoth 2.5 lakh families have already registered objections with the administration, demanding to be included in the list, and objections continue to flow in. Social activists say that of the 21,64,401 BPL families (data from Buldhana and Akola districts not incorporated) included in the list, as many as 50% of names could be spurious, while a large number of deserving families have been left out. Some 20-25% of gram sabhas have rejected the BPL lists of their villages prepared by government-appointed surveyors. This is perhaps the first time Vidarbha has seen such a hullabaloo over a single survey, and, predictably, the administration is on the defensive. Whilst no clear-cut reason appears to be forthcoming for irregularities on such a vast scale, there are interesting differences between the explanations offered by government officials and the observations of social groups working with the people. When contacted, government officials and people’s representatives gave a range of views -- from downright denial to bland assurances of corrective action. Some even went as far as to blame the villagers for the errors. R U Avchar, project officer, Gadchiroli district, went on record saying that “heads of families are giving wrong and misleading information”. R P Sawalakhe, project officer for Gondia district, said that villagers were not present at the gram sabha, which is why there were errors. Some people’s representatives, on the other hand, blame the administration for not implementing the programme properly. Zilla parishad presidents from Buldhana, Anita Ranbavare, and Gondia, P G Katare, both believe this is the reason. According to Gadchiroli Zilla Parishad member Nandu Narote, the survey should have been carried out by village committees. But mostly, government officials and people’s representatives have blamed the errors on technical factors. The explanation, roughly, is that the programme for a BPL census in the country was prepared in 2002 by the central government’s rural development department, under the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2002-2007). It was to be implemented at the district-level, and responsibility was allotted to the divisional commissioners, district collectors, financial directors, block development officers and district-level project officers of the state rural development department. But at the time, teachers, gram sevaks and talathis -- who are trained to carry out surveys -- refused to do the survey. Because of this, the work was completed in May 2006 instead of May 2003, as scheduled. The state government had to put untrained people -- contract teaching assistants, part-time workers, anganwadi workers, local NGOs and even unemployed youth -- on the job. Social activists allege that more than just incompetence is involved. The first problem, according to them, is the government’s policy of pre-determining the number of BPL families. “This ‘target-oriented’ approach is the biggest inducement to corruption,” says Bandu Sane of the CSO Khoj. “Once you know that only so many families can be included in the list, everyone scrambles for a place, and, of course, the most powerful, or those in a position to pay bribes, get their names included, whilst the deserving poor, with no money or power, get left out.” Khoj works in the Melghat area of Amravati district, notorious for its ‘malnutrition’ deaths. It is associated with the Right to Food Campaign. Satish Gogulwar of Amhi Amchya Arogya Sathi (AAAS), Gadchiroli, agrees: “Targets, everywhere, cause manipulation. And in the case of the BPL list, manipulation has been rampant.” The effect of this target-oriented approach is visible in the survey’s inferences, which verge on the nonsensical. For instance, while in highly urbanised Nagpur district, the number of BPL families has registered a three-fold rise since 1997, with current figures being 6.09 lakh, the tribal districts of Chandrapur and Gadchiroli have registered a two-fold increase during the same period. In the agricultural districts of Bhandara and Yavatmal (the latter recently attained notoriety because of the large number of farmer suicides), poverty levels actually appear to have dropped. In Akola and Buldhana districts, the primary lists were not released at all because of huge errors. These wide fluctuations in BPL numbers indicate a distinct effort at ‘homogenisation’ through targets. But the biggest culprit, predictably, is corruption at the implementation level. In most villages, says Satish Gogulwar, the form’s contents, procedure for giving points, and the survey’s objective were not explained to the villagers. Hence the results came out wrong. Bandu Sane says: “Not a single prescribed procedure was followed in the actual survey.” According to him, many deserving people were not included in the survey at all. As for getting approval from the gram sabha, “the gram sabha does not exist as far as the Melghat tribal area is concerned. The gram sevaks ‘manage’ the show by coercing people into signing documents. The tribal people, totally unaware of government procedure, are too scared to resist or ask questions.” A classic case study of how the BPL survey was conducted is that of Anjangaon Bari village, located in Amravati tehsil, Amravati district. In this village, the villagers, dissatisfied with the way the survey had been conducted, carried out a parallel survey of their own and sent the results to the District Rural Development Association (DRDA). The story, according to Narendra Bais of the Vidarbha Lok Vikas Samiti, runs something like this: A Pune-based NGO called Prayas designed a questionnaire relating to the BPL survey, which contains 15 questions to be answered with a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. For instance: “Was the survey procedure explained to you?” “Was the system of giving points explained to you?” “Was the BPL list put up before the gram sabha, for approval?” Bais and his associates distributed copies of this questionnaire to 60 families in the village. “When the villagers realised that they had been swindled,” says Bais, “they organised a fresh survey through the gaon samaj sabha and sent the results to the DRDA with their objections.” What followed was a case of farce piled upon farce. The DRDA ordered the panchayat samiti to repeat the survey. It was decided that the survey village development officer would himself conduct the survey, which, this time, would be an ‘extended survey’. But instead of coming to the village, the officer simply called a selected group of people to his office and got them to fill in the forms. The remaining people were not given forms at all. “Village women have alleged that the official also took a bribe of Rs 25-50 from everyone,” says Bais. The village development officer sent his new list to the panchayat samiti without taking the gram sabha’s approval. When villagers and activists objected, a gram sabha was called on May 22, the first in the financial year. “The BPL list did not figure on the agenda of the gram sabha,” says Bais. “In the last 15 minutes of the proceedings, a kind of ‘rapid reading’ of a list of 400 BPL families was performed, and approval taken without discussion.” Bais and the villagers again took action by sending a report of the happenings, along with the applications of those left out of the list, to the SDO, CEO of the zilla parishad, panchayat samiti, district collector and the DRDA. Till date, no action has been taken. “We have not even been given the entire BPL list,” says Bais. “The Supreme Court directives say that citizens should have access to such documents on demand, but the panchayat samiti has not made available any list to the villagers. We only know that the BPL list from Anjangaon Bari has the names of about 1,400 families (the village is a large one with a population of about 900). And, according to our estimates, about 700 of the names are spurious.” The large-scale irregularities that have surfaced in this survey have placed a question mark over the reliability of the entire survey, and, for that matter, any similar survey conducted by the government machinery. Is there really a way to arrive at realistic facts and figures, considering the huge hurdles? Says Satish Gogulwar: “You cannot reject the survey (outright). In Gadchiroli, many political parties are encouraging gram sabhas to reject the BPL list, but we think that the way is to accept the list and then demand corrections under the Supreme Court’s directions.” Narendra Bais disagrees: “The survey is a total (mess). Going by what the Anjangaon Bari experience has taught us, the authorities are not concerned at all about transparency in survey procedures. This way, no survey will be clean. I think the only way to get the real picture is to leave the decision with the village -- let the gaon samaj sabha do its own survey and select its own BPL families. That is the only way to ensure transparency.” At present, the procedure of preparing BPL lists is in limbo, with the administration literally snowed under the sheer volume of objections. What finally emerges from this conflict between people and the government machinery remains to be seen. (Aparna Pallavi is an independent journalist based in Nagpur) InfoChange News & Features, September 2006
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