December 20, 2006: The matter is not too old for the sands of time to have covered it. On this date, while addressing the people from the public forum of the Indian Marketing Development Federation, the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Shivraj Singh Chouhan said two important things. He said that 37 percent of people in Madhya Pradesh are leading their lives below poverty line officially, however actually this number is as much as 60 percent of the population. He also said that while a lot is being said about development and even if big companies like Reliance Industries set industries here and earn profit, it does not actually benefit the poor of the state. The clear meaning of the chief minister’s statements is that actually we are hiding the poor status of the large chunk of the society and despite a number of developmental processes; their benefits have not reached the poor.

December 27, 2006: The National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) of the Indian Government released its 505th report based on 61st survey round conducted between July 2004 and June 2005. This report analyses the monthly expenditure per person in the country. This shows that the 47 rural populace in MP spends only Rs 12 per day. As against this, the 43 percent urban populace spends Rs 19 per day. The democratic government in the country has decided that the minimum of Rs 365 per month (Rs 12 per day) is necessary to live in the country in present circumstances.

February 5, 2007: National Sample Survey Organisation released its report no. 512 of 61st round survey on Perceived adequacy of Food Consumption in Indian Households and declared that according to the National Sample Survey Organisation released its report no. 512 of 61st round survey on Perceived adequacy of Food Consumption in Indian Households and declared that according to the mixed recall period consumption poverty in Madhya Pradesh has declined from 37.43% to 32.4% and nationally from 26.1% to 21.8%. 

March 14, 2007: The state rural development minister, on behalf of the state government of Madhya Pradesh, accepted that owing to discrepancies 11.42 lakh people had not been included in the BPL category and 8.71 lakh families have been included into the list following amendments after receiving complaints of the poor left out from the list. But they deny that people have been deprived owing to the index of household lavatory. They said that whatever process was conducted was as per the guidelines of the Indian Government. There is no question emerged that who is accountable for these 11.42 Lakh mistakes.

Sikroda village is based in the Pahargarh block of Morena district. The BPL Survey found not a single bonded labourer in this village. But when a research team reached the village in March 2004, many persons admitted that they were working as bonded labourers. Government officials denied this information. Later, in July 2004, researchers read in newspapers that 20 bonded labourers were liberated from the village. 

For the 2.2 million families out of below poverty line in Madhya Pradesh, the BPL is the line that passes below the affluent and above the poor. Though in realty, the politics of poverty is presently far more important than any other issue, somehow our state does not want to look at the poverty existing here. State avoids it as they avoid in Sikroda. Actually, as a special vision is necessary to perceive beauty, similarly an objective and strong political will is necessary to look at and admit poverty.

The simple point is that poor people exist and poverty is clearly manifested, but the central and the state government does not want to identify or accept them. It is proven now that the government is trying its best to hide the poor people and is trying to sweep them under the carpet. The format of the BPL survey has been finalized in a manner that minimum people are included in the list.

Following this too, the survey process to identify people below poverty line (BPL) has severely impacted people’s rights. First of all the government came out with an order to identify those people as poor who do not get enough to eat or who work as bonded labourers, but this did not happen. The negligence of the surveying teams was so high that either they did not take the pains to visit the interior or remote villages or completed the formalities sitting in the courtyards of some affluent person in the village. Due to this discrepancy, several genuinely poor persons were deprived of their place in the BPL list. For this the government made another provision that such left out families should put forth their claim and get their name included while getting deleted the names of undeserving families. Here the government officials did the mistakes but the punishment of taking animosity with the powerful and affluent of the village was given to the poor people. Despite this, as many as 11.42 families presented their claims and the government had to admit that 8.71 lakh of these families should have been in the BPL list of 44.77 lakh families, which meant that about 25 percent of the names included were those of undeserving people. As per the studies by non-government organizations, only 37 percent of the deprived people have presented their claim, which means that more than 25 lakh families were affected by the gross negligence of the government.

The state governments identify the poor people residing in the particular state as per a policy-based process of the union government. No state government has the right to set its own norms for identifying poor or drawing developmental schemes for them. How many poor families reside in MP? This is decided by the union government on the basis of the directives (or rather pressure) of the international financial organizations like the World Bank – that have clearly lost the vision of actually perceiving and feeling the poverty. The irony is that the government (which we term as welfare state and as per the constitution the government is responsible to safeguard and preserve the basic rights of all persons in the country) has officially divided the society through the BPL and now the welfare schemes are extended to only those persons who fall into the category of poor as per government’s definition.

The government has managed to bring about this division, but in last ten year it has not been able to ensure that a humane and just process of identifying all poor is in place. When the BPL survey was completed in 1997-98, ironically uniformity was noticed in all areas of the country that the government officials (BPL surveyors) kept the land-holders, tractor owners, house owners and politically powerful people in the top of the BPL list. Since the government is pre-decided that only a fixed number of people are to be included in the BPL list, the genuinely poor got deprived of getting into the list and lost the constitutional protection of the government. After five years, the government announced that poverty had declined by ten percent in the country and by 5.5 percent in MP.