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Big Phoney Lists by Pratap Bhanu Mehta


The institution of the BPL list has probably become the most potent symbol of the self-defeating approach of the Indian state towards poverty. Ostensibly this list, that identifies households below the poverty line so that benefits can be directed towards them, was meant as an instrument of poverty alleviation. Now it has become one of the biggest sources of obfuscation of the challenges of poverty.

A poverty line is, at one level, a simple index of measuring progress in poverty reduction. It gives a single figure to concentrate the mind. The construction of poverty measures has elicited some extraordinarily painstaking work from economists. The detail, patience and professionalism of the academic debate on measuring poverty have been very impressive. But a construction that has academic and benchmarking uses has been converted into the holy grail of poverty alleviation policy. And it is here that the uses of the BPL are disingenuous, systematically obscuring both the nature of poverty and what needs to be done.

For policy purposes the BPL is a disingenuous construct. Normatively speaking, this line is an exercise in bad faith because it arbitrarily separates those who can avail benefits from those who cannot. The difference between those immediately above and below the poverty line is miniscule, almost irrelevant from a practical point of view. Yet that cut-off arbitrarily determines access to benefits. A BPL line, rather than being an expression of a commitment to equality, is a subtle exemplar of discrimination. The cut-off also bears no relationship to the particular objectives of public policy. It also does little justice to the fact that the poor are unevenly deprived along different attributes. A list has to be made with reference to objectives; but here the existence of the list defines the limits of the programme. The BPL is a classic case of state inversion that confuses ends and means.

Second, the process of creating BPL lists produces a strange intellectual contortion. First there is a survey that supposedly caps how many poor people there are. Then criteria are evolved to identify which particular households fall within the set. This exercise is a bit of sleight of hand: the identifying criteria selected should be such that they do not yield a figure higher than the cap that has been predetermined. If you go by criteria, caps make no sense. If you are committed to the caps, the criteria look arbitrary. Another instance of the state engaging in circular reasoning unhinged to any objectives.

Third, there is the practical difficulty of implementing any criteria for selection. Again distinguished economists and planners have performed a heroic task of identifying easily implementable criteria that do not rely on complicated and dubious surveys. But objectively verifiable criteria that do not over-include or under-include are hard to design. Then the state resorts to including whole groups, or sometimes districts, in a blunt way that again makes the list discriminatory. It is small wonder that the states are deeply dissatisfied with the Centre setting the parameters of the criteria; the Centre in turn is suspicious that allowing the states to do their thing is a recipe for anarchy. But the most unconscionable practical consequence is the horrendous rate of under-inclusion and over-inclusion that has characterised these lists, often in excess of 50 per cent. The lists marginalise the poor rather than empower them.

So why does the state continue to persist with so flimsy a construction, one that is normatively dubious and practically difficult? In some schemes the state has made a departure, by making goods universal or by allowing self-targeting. But the mystique of the BPL remains strong. In part its hold may be attributed to state inertia; the state often continues along inherited ways of structuring the world even when circumstances have rendered those strategies futile. Part of it is ideological: to show that something is being done for the poor, you first have to set the poor apart as a category, and make them a special object. How can we be seen for standing up for the poor, if we are treating them as equal citizens rather than as special wards of the state? It is also a way of ensuring that schemes for the poor by being exclusively for them, receive little attention from others. Ironically, all subsidies which the privileged enjoy, like petrol, are mostly couched in universalistic terms.

Part of it is a false fiscal scare. On this view, if you don’t target, and universalise schemes, the costs may turn out to be prohibitive. But this assumption is mostly false. As states that have universalised PDS, like Tamil Nadu, have demonstrated, there is self-targeting that limits the fiscal burden. Finally, there is also political expediency. The ministry of agriculture and food and state governments would rather let a catfight break out over who gets included or excluded, than focus attention on the real issue at hand: how do you design delivery systems with minimal leakage? The messiness of the BPL lists shifts the blame to civil society. If food is not reaching the poor, it can be blamed on the fact that people are gaming BPL lists; whereas the real culprits are delivery mechanisms that include everything from FCI to the ownership of food shops. Again, states that have done well with PDS focus less on futile controversies over lists, and more on structures and technologies of delivery.

What lists are needed depends upon the objective of the programme. But at this historical juncture it is clear that the BPL lists are serving very little purpose. For most schemes that matter to the poor they are unnecessary; these schemes can either be universalised or criteria can be evolved that bear some relation to the purpose of the scheme rather than rely on an antecedently given list like BPL that we have not got right in over five decades. It will also remove this great scramble in the states to make poverty their sole revenue generation industry.

Government needs to make a distinction between two kinds of waste. There is a form where the state incurs slightly higher costs, but the objective is fulfilled; universalisation of PDS will probably take this form. Then there is the form of waste where neither does the state save money, nor is the objective of the scheme fulfilled. But the BPL abets this more insidious kind of waste, as our unconscionable nutrition outcomes show. It is time to dispense with the Big Phoney Lists, that are ruining our anti-poverty programmes.