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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Housing plan: BPL out, caste census in -Basant Kumar Mohanty

Housing plan: BPL out, caste census in -Basant Kumar Mohanty

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published Published on May 4, 2015   modified Modified on May 4, 2015
-The Telegraph

New Delhi: The Centre plans to change the criteria for selecting the beneficiaries of its rural housing scheme for the poor, dropping the earlier poverty-list-based method for one that uses a points system based on the ongoing caste census.

The government believes the proposed reform will achieve better targeting by including deserving families left out of the below-poverty-line (BPL) list, but critics feel it would leave a huge number of households tied on points in every village, spawning controversy.

It's the Union rural development ministry that has drafted the list of 10 proposed criteria, carrying 15 points in all, for the Indira Awaas Yojana.
Housing
 
The ministry wants to build 25 lakh houses in 2015-16 under the scheme, with Bengal set the highest target of 4.32 lakh houses because of its high number of homeless and poor.

However, the cabinet is expected to change the 75:25 ratio of central and state spending under the scheme to 50:50, which could make it more challenging for some states to meet their target.

Till now, the states used to select the beneficiaries from their BPL lists, prepared after the last BPL census in 2002, which ruling parties found easy to manipulate because the lists were thin on specifics.

In 2011, the BPL census was renamed as the Socio-Economic Caste Census, with the government deciding to collect caste data along with more wide-ranging and detailed economic data.

The caste census, the first since 1931, was meant not just to enable necessary revisions to reservation lists and volumes but also to better target the welfare schemes.

So, the caste census data would have replaced BPL data anyway - the government has decided it will be from this year for the rural housing scheme and has drafted the criteria.

Sources said that although the re-verification of caste census data wasn't yet complete across India, there was enough material to make the revised criteria a success.

Rajeev Sadanandan, a joint secretary in the ministry, wrote to all the states last month seeking their comments on the draft criteria by April 30. The ministry is likely to finalise the criteria in May so that the states can identify the beneficiaries by June.

There has been a general feeling that the BPL data had outlasted their utility.

For instance, the Yojana guidelines say at least 60 per cent of the houses must go to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes and 15 per cent to minority groups. But many states have complained that the 60 per cent quota was no longer feasible because virtually all their BPL Dalit and tribal families had already been covered.

The quotas will remain in the new points system but more Dalit and tribal families will become eligible, officials say.

First, the gram panchayat will publish a list of households and their scores, seeking objections. After the list is finalised, the highest-scorers will be given priority.

Doubters

Some experts and bureaucrats, however, have doubts about the criteria chosen and the weightage distribution, although they agree the BPL list-based system has become dated.

One of them is economics professor Abhijit Sen, who headed a government committee that suggested how to select the beneficiaries for various welfare schemes using caste census data. The proposed criteria are a modified version of his panel's recommendations.

Sen punched holes into the draft criteria: "An old man living in a one-room kutcha house will not get more than two or three marks (points). A family of 10 people living in a two-room kutcha house will not get a single mark."

His panel's report had suggested the government take into account the number of members, especially married couples, in a household as well. So too the age and health of the members.

"Under these (proposed) criteria, the poorest would surely get more than four or five marks but there will be a large chunk of families with two or three marks each," he said.

If a gram panchayat has to select 10 families, it can easily select four or five high scorers but picking the remaining five would be difficult because hundreds of families would have scored two or three each, Sen said.

A state rural development secretary said the draft points system appeared too cumbersome for the severely understaffed panchayat offices to handle.

Another secretary found the relative weightage given to the criteria arbitrary and "subjective". Why two points for a family living in one kutcha room and just one for a household with no adults, he asked.

Four crore rural and two crore urban families lack houses. The government builds about 25 lakh rural houses every year under the Indira Awaas Yojana.

The Telegraph, 4 May, 2015, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150504/jsp/nation/story_18088.jsp#.VUc7r5Nr9v0


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