The President, in her address to Parliament, laid out the road map of UPA?s pro-poor policies in no uncertain terms. Conceptually sound, these programmes could go a long way in ensuring improvement in welfare if properly targeted and implemented. But the outcome of previous efforts, especially the procedures used to identify the poor, does not provide for much optimism. The reason is that though three grandiose attempts have been already made to identify the poor through nationwide surveys in 1991, 1999 and 2002?a fourth one is currently underway?there have been no substantial improvements in targeting.
The first survey estimated the number of below poverty line rural households at 34.46 lakh whereas the second survey put it at 27.37 lakh. While the first survey used the income criteria, the second one used the expenditure method. To further improve the quality of statistics of the poor, the government decided to use a new set of 13 socio economic indicators to identify the poor in the 2002 survey.
However, a writ petition filed in the Supreme Court challenged the methodology and the government decided in March 2004 that the survey findings need not be finalised. Later, in 2005, it informed the court that the 2002 survey results would be finalised but that the BPL list of the earlier census would not be deleted and that the newly prepared list would be subject to the approval of the grama sabha, with provisions for appeal against any grievances to the block development officer or collectors. However, later studies have shown that the error in the new BPL list was as high as 34%. In fact, a Planning Commission study noted that the BPL population excluded from their PDS entitlements was in the 40-50% range in states like Assam and Gujarat and the APL population using BPL entitlements was in the same range in states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.
Given the scenario the experts have now recommended that the Centre allow the states to carry out their own improvements in methodologies and procedures in the 2007 BPL survey to improve its utility and that the rural development ministry confine itself to ensuring that the changes would not be a deterrent to the aggregation of state wise data and its comparability over time. But this survey is yet to be completed in many states.
So how does the UPA government plan to surmount the identification problem when it expends large amounts on the various poverty alleviation schemes over the next five years? The presidential address indicates that it will adopt a two pronged strategy. On one hand, it will depend on the new Unique Identity Card scheme for each citizen that will be implemented over the next three years overseen by an Empowered Group which it claims would serve the dual purpose of identification for development programmes, and also for security.
However, in the short term the government would continue to use targeted identification cards, which it claims would subsume and replace the omnibus Below Poverty Line (BPL) list. The NREGA has already provided for a job card and the proposed Food Security Act would also create a new card. And identification of beneficiaries for other programmes which currently use the omnibus BPL list would continue with the caveat that all choice of beneficiaries will be made through gram sabhas and urban local bodies and that the list placed in the public domain to be open to challenge.
One the face of it this seems to be a reasonably sound solution in a country where the foot prints of hard core poverty are readily recognisable by both laymen and experts. The bulk of the poor would be landless, living in temporary shelters, mostly with women headed households or belonging to minority community or scheduled tribe and caste communities. And it would not be too difficult to identify and help them.
But such idealistic assumptions fly in the face of realties that have repeatedly shown that the rural power structures have circumvented even the best laid out programmes whose benefits have been cornered by the politically powerful economic and social groups. Can UPA II change that?
p.raghavan@expressindia.com