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Planning Commission member Abhjit Sen argues that evaluation of poverty must be done on the basis of income rather than calorie intake, while rejecting the recommendation of a rural development ministry panel suggesting that 50% of India should be brought under the ambit of the poverty line
Despite the ruling United Progressive Alliance’s commitment to bringing in a National Food Security Bill, in Parliament, as legal guarantee against hunger, ministries and government departments have failed to iron out their differences over the actual number of poor in the country. Adding a new dimension to the below-the-poverty-line debate, Union Planning Commission member Abhjit Sen recently reasoned that if one factored in a calorie intake of 2,400 for rural areas and 2,100 for urban areas, then 80% of rural India and 64% of urban India would be below the poverty line. A rural development ministry panel, headed by N C Saxena, said that 50% of Indians were below the poverty line if one considered the criterion of calorie intake; it suggested they be covered under the various BPL schemes. Sen, a member (agriculture) of the plan panel, pointed out that the rural development ministry panel’s recommendation this year on estimation of BPL families was not binding on the government. “Estimation of poverty was not the terms of reference of the N C Saxena committee. Its recommendation (on poverty estimation) has no meaning. The committee (constituted by the rural development ministry) was asked to recommend criteria for identification of BPL families in rural India, which is being considered,” he explained. Clearly, there is no consensus on the quantum of people living below the poverty line in India. According to the plan panel’s estimation in 2004-05, 30 crore people live below the poverty line. However, according to the rural development ministry’s 2002 poverty census, India had over 40 crore poor people. The World Bank, on the basis of 1.25 dollars per day, believes that India has 45 crore poor people. Several states are disputing the figures proposed by both the Union Planning Commission and the Union rural development ministry, claiming that unintended exclusions of genuinely poor people would result in unnecessary discord and discontent at the ground level. As of now, poverty is estimated on the basis of the 1973 formula of monthly expenditure on food items for a calorie intake of 2,400 for individuals in rural areas, and 2,100 for people in urban areas, considered the minimum requirement for healthy living. In 2007, the plan panel fixed Rs 368 for rural areas and Rs 560 for urban areas as the per capita monthly expenses required to buy food to meet the 1973 calorie intake criterion. In the meantime, the central government last year constituted another committee headed by Suresh D Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council (PMEAC), to suggest a new methodology for determining the poverty line in India. This committee is yet to submit its report. In an apparent bid to ignite a debate on India’s poverty figures, Sen said a mix of food and monthly expenditure-based criteria would be a good indicator of poverty estimation. But he refused to comment further, stating that one would have to wait for the recommendations of the Tendulkar committee. Meanwhile, the All-India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) has been demanding a return to the universal public distribution system (PDS) and strengthening of the system in the context of unprecedented price rises. It felt the Planning Commission’s poverty estimates did not correspond with the abysmal figures for child malnutrition and anaemia as revealed by the National Health and Family Surveys (NHFS). “Thanks to the faulty criteria, even marginalised sections such as tribals and scheduled castes are denied the benefits of a BPL card because they own some land, or send their children to school. Thus, the legal exclusion of the poor from the system is a major assault on their right to food security,” AIDWA said. A National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study estimates that “unidentified families without having any card aggregate 1.2 crore at the all-India level,” while “the total number of excess cards issued at the all-India level were more than 2 crore”. The study was done to examine the extent to which foodgrain disbursed through ration shops was actually reaching BPL and AAY (Antyodaya Anna Yojana) categories, and to identify irregularities in the public distribution system. The NCAER pointed out that the inclusion of non-poor in subsidised food schemes was a much more severe problem and that this was found in almost every state. At the all-India level, the inclusion error was up to 25%, as the number of BPL cards issued was 9.7 crore, compared to 5.8 crore families existing in the BPL category, the study said. The report also showed that the exclusion of poor from the subsidy scheme is highest in Goa and Uttarakhand where the targeted public distribution system (TPDS) had failed in targeting up to 30%. Noting that the study portrayed a mixed picture, the NCAER said that while, on the one hand, food was being delivered to the poor regularly in a majority of surveyed states, “deeper probing revealed gross irregularities indicating large-scale identification errors, excess cards issued and widespread diversion of food entitled for the poor”. According to agri-economist Pramod Kumar, who led the NCAER survey, inclusion of non-poor and exclusion of families in the BPL and AAY categories is a major problem. The expert committee set up by the rural development ministry concedes that a large number of families living in chronic poverty are often excluded from BPL lists, while exposing flaws in the system of identifying BPL families by the government for implementation of anti-poverty programmes including the targeted public distribution system. “The starkest statistics that emerge is that only 49.1% of the poorest quintile of the country possesses BPL/Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) cards while 17.4% of the richest quintile of the population possesses BPL/AAY cards,” the committee chaired by NC Saxena said in its report. The report added that about 23% of poor people did not have ration cards. While advocating exclusion of a large number of families from the BPL lists, the committee recommends that families with double the land of the district average of agricultural land, or a two-wheeler, or one running borewell, or income tax payers should be deleted from the BPL lists. It further recommends the automatic inclusion of families fulfilling criteria including being designated a ‘primitive tribe’, ‘dalit group’, ‘homeless household’, etc. The committee’s mandate was also to look at revising the 14 parameters laid out by the earlier Sajeeva Reddy committee to calculate BPL figures in the states. The rural development ministry had found flaws in the 14-point eligibility of the Reddy committee. The Saxena committee also recommends a survey of BPL rural families to be undertaken across the country during August 2009-January 2010 as work on Census 2011 is to start from next year, requiring huge numbers of field staff. Source: The Indian Express, July 13, 2009
Asian Age, July 13, 2009
ANI, July 6, 2009
The Financial Express, July 2, 2009
http://www.zeenews.com, July 2009
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