| |
Residing in a hut in the village Ghandila of Seoni district in Madhya Pradesh is Halki Bai an abandoned tribal woman. She works as a labourer and earns a meager amount of Rs.15/- per day. For this she has to struggle hard and manages to get work for just around 8 days in a month. In an accident she got wounded and the treatment turned her into a debtor of Rs. 31, 000/-. Being landless and with no alternate source of income she stays in very miserable condition. Upon all these factors the biggest surprise and irony is that she scored 19 points out of the total of 52 points in the BPL Survey which automatically excluded her from the BPL category and placed her in the category of the rich. Similar is the situation with Rajjo Bai, the widow of village Pottia. The earlier survey list had enlisted Rajjo Bai in the BPL category and had been availing the much required benefits of government schemes and antodaya scheme but according to the recent survey she no longer belongs to the BPL category. In this survey she scored 17 points and with the tentative Cut off being 13 for Seoni district, poor and unfortunate Rajjo Bai stands out of the BPL list for no fault of her.
This is not just the story of Halki Bai or Rajjo Bai but of 10 lakh marginalized and vulnerable families in the state of Madhya Pradesh who are facing the opera of discrimination. And have been excluded from the Below Poverty Line list because of irrelevant and inhuman indicators and the non-committal process of survey. From an in-depth study by the Democratic Alliance Campaign for Good Governance in coordination with ActionAid (Bhopal) confirms that proving to be poor, has been a tough battle for the real poor while an easy one for the non-poor, further the motive to reduce burden to the possible extent, the government has already decided the results in advance without completing the entire process decided for identifying poor. Thus the parameters fixed and the process undertaken to identify the poor has become quite questionable. The process of BPL survey primarily involved a questionnaire of 13 questions (indicators), each question has 5 options, to which 0 to 4 points were allotted. Further, to this the state identifies 37.43% people who have derived minimum points and consider them to be as those poor people who can be taken in the BPL list.
On analysis of the indicators one realizes the irrelevant perceptions it is based upon, it is understood that size of land holding is considered as an important indicator; but quality of the land is the additional factor which provides weightage to this indicator and unfortunately this aspect has been totally ignored. While going through the two years study conducted by the alliance of Civil Society Organisation in the state of Madhya Pradesh and is purely a people centered effort, to ensure effective survey, it was realized that 58% families from the villages covered in the study feel that productivity of land is more important than the total landholding. For example- Sambu, a Korku adivasi (tribal) of Rayatvadi village of Betul district was given 18 points in the survey for possessing 3 acres of hilly, unirrigated, stony and unproductive land thus making him overqualified for being in the BPL list.
In the last five years, the Government of Madhya Pradesh has implemented various developmental schemes and sanitation campaign in which 10 lakh toilets were constructed in the villages by contributing Rs.650/- for construction of each. Now this survey considers toilet as an indicator, due to which all those poor families who had constructed toilets under the government’s scheme received 3 to 4 points which ultimately increased their total points. Thus availing benefit of a scheme which is again non-productive in nature has proved to be a curse for these families. Further, type of house is another indicator which has become a woe for the poor. Families having pucca houses earned more points; no care was taken to address the issue of those pucca houses which were actually built under the Indira Awas Yojana which provides poor families with Rs.20,000/- for construction of house in mere 20 square meters. Again, all Indira Awas Yojana supported is expected to have a toilet in built, thus the poor family who availed the benefit of a government scheme to have a shelter looses on the BPL survey aspect by earning more points for both having a pucca house and toilet too. During the discussion with the community at the time of the study, it was realized that as the scheme was target oriented the beneficiaries were under pressure of completing the construction and in several cases the families have had to sell of their land, bullocks and other assets. Further, due to corruption they did not even get the entire allotted amount. This raises the question of the basis on which a family can be considered above BPL if it has benefited from Indira Awas Yojana. It is obvious that this scheme is not giving any regular or productive returns nor is a source of income. Hence, it is essential to further analyse the indicator of pucca house and differentiate between a house built through Indira Awas Yojana and a pucca house built by the family themselves.
Ruddi adivasi of Duni village of Betul district used to migrate and work as agriculture laborer, looking at his poor status he was donated with 7 pair of cloths two years back by his employer, which he still possesses. But this gift turned against him during the BPL survey. Possession of this many number of clothes made him a non-poor man as per the survey schedule which includes clothes as one of the indicators and in the gambit Ruddi got 18 points and got excluded from the list. As per the government norms family possessing more than four pair of clothes is not considered as poor. In this regard every villager and sensitive person who believes in humanity has criticized and opposed this criterion. The reason behind this is that during the times of any festival or ceremony poor families are rewarded with cloths by the upper class (rich) families and in addition the poor also go to the extent of taking loans from local money lenders for purchase of clothes for festivals which pushes them into the vicious cycle of povety. Thus possessing clothes seem to be an improper indicator to measure family well-being. Similarly, the analysts while defining poverty has given importance to food availability – this indicator focuses on the number of the times the family avails food, whether the family gets food for one time or gets two square meals; however the quality and nutritional aspect of food has been totally ignored. Even the means of livelihood which is an important indicator linked with food intake has been completely ignored. For example a person may fill his belly by begging, eating from garbage or thrown food, prostitution, or by manual scavenging. Thus as per the analysis a person who avail food is straight away earns 4 points.
Although landless adivasi Ram Prasad of Semori panchayat (Betul) has no resources for his survival, possessing a cycle and radio and sending his two sons to school has deprived him from being included in the BPL list. Looking to the present circumstances any person earning Rs. 1000/- can purchase a radio of Rs.100/-, TV and cycle of Rs.800/-, but possession of these items have cost the poor families by earning of an additional 3-4 points. In the new definition of development it is easy to have consumer able items. One can have sales promotion schemes for Television, Radio or Computer which provides easy means to possess these items by the person but the toughest job of life is to arrange for food, and particularly for the marginalized families and children. In the case of education and children going to school, it is quite obvious that presently there is an increase in the number of school going children and this majorly due to the promotional aspects linked with the
school like the midday meal scheme. This has encouraged quite a number of poor families to send their children to school. Another aspect regarding education which has reflected during the survey is the belief that an educated person cannot be poor. This perspective has led to the loss for several poor families who have unemployed and educated persons in their families, by getting rewarded with 3-4 points. In relation to earnings (occupation) for livelihood, government believes that skilled workers have secured and regular jobs and so they and the other category of wage-earners (government and private jobs) have been given the same weightage.
In this survey a puzzling question is asked regarding the kind of government help needed by the poor people? This question has equally confused the enumerators and the community. The community thought that the government is willing to extent loan support to them and this prompted them to answer in expectation to availing of loan. The larger the amount requested the lesser the points earned. This led to several disqualification of several genuinely poor families from the BPL list in a very different manner – the poor did not expect nor did have the capacity to ask and then repay the loan amount hence they did not request for any leading to the assumption to that non-requirement of loan means self sufficiency and hence not to be included in the BPL list as they earned more points (3-4 points) for this pseudo sufficiency. Neither the government nor the Department of Rural Development has conducted any study on how the villagers are trapped in the clutches of the credit machineries functioning in the rural areas. Thus those who have taken loans from banks were considered rich and given 3 points, but the ground reality is that the banks have distributed maximum loan in the tribal area; but still not much change have been noticed in the poverty status of the region. In Petelavad block of Jabhua district, banks have distributed loans of around Rs.12 crores in the last three years and now most of the tribals have been declared as defaulters and these loans are being repaid by selling off their land, houses or other assets. Thus one who does not have loan is rich, however on another hand one who is very poor does not borrow loans because there is no one ready to give him.
Thus in this context a very pertinent question arise on whether there is a possibility of an effective process for identification of the poor? Undoubtedly, the possibilities are certainly there but only if the criteria are fixed on humanitarian basis. In the present context it is clearly felt that the government for showing success of its developmental programs like construction of toilets, implementation of Indira Awas Yojana and campaign on education is trying to portray that these programs have been successful in eradicating in rural areas and people have become self-sufficient. Besides, the state has also failed to set a norm to put a control on those non-eligible persons who have managed to get included in the list and fix any criteria for punishment for such persons thus discouraging any such endeavors. Thus even though everyone has fulfilled assigned responsibilities there is a sincere need to be more sensitive else such tokenism would land a genuinely poor family far away from the benefits and would further slip into the abyss of poverty never being able to come out of the laid 13 indicators for many more years to come.
Sachin Kumar Jain |
|
