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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | NAC in hurry, need more time: Rural ministry by Devesh Kumar

NAC in hurry, need more time: Rural ministry by Devesh Kumar

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published Published on Sep 8, 2010   modified Modified on Sep 8, 2010

A conflict has risen between the National Advisory Council (NAC), chaired by Ms Sonia Gandhi, and the rural development ministry over the time-frame for completing the BPL census.

NAC members N C Saxena and Harsh Mander, in particular, want the head count to be completed by September 2011. The rural development ministry has ruled out the possibility of conducting the census of BPL cardholders within such a short duration.

It says that it can start the exercise only after next April, when the Registrar-General and Census Commissioner’s office would have wound up Census 2011.

The latest round of BPL census operation is unique in the sense that it is being synchronised with UIDAI’s efforts to prepare unique I-cards for citizens. The latter has appointed state rural development secretaries as registrars in the states. They have also been tasked with conducting the BPL head count in their respective states.

According to state rural development secretaries, justice can be done to the exercise only if the Centre grants them at least 18 months. “Our main endeavour is to ensure that the rights of the poor are not denied, and that only the really needy are made the beneficiaries of government schemes,” contended the rural development secretary from one of the states.

The rural development ministry, in an attempt to maintain the quality of the data being compiled by them, has taken recourse to the concepts of ‘inclusion’ and ‘exclusion errors’ to eliminate possibilities of duplication and to ensure that only the genuinely needy are inducted in the BPL household category. And it is here the UIDAI, with its biometrics and iris identification, is expected to help eliminate the chances of leakage.

All this, rural development ministry officials point out, will require a lot of time. “But NAC wants us to complete the BPL census operation by September next year. They’re obviously in a hurry. Officials on the field, however, have made it clear that they require at least 18 months to do a full-proof job,” said a senior official.

The rural development ministry is at present in the process of completing a pilot project on BPL census. It covers four villages in every agro-climatic region of the country (as is done in the case of the National Sample Survey).

To ensure a fair representation, villages in the two poorest and richest districts will be covered. The pilot project will, in tandem with the Public Health Foundation of India, seek to identify malnutrition levels, which can be used to qualitatively identify the poorest.

Initial reports from the pilot project have been confounding, and have put question marks on the quality of BPL censuses held earlier. A team visiting a village in Andhra Pradesh was shocked to find the five richest persons included in the BPL list.

There are sharp differences among various agencies on the exact number of BPL families. The Planning Commission has pegged the figure at 6.52 crores while the Tendulkar Committee says it’s 8 crores. The cumulative figures compiled by the states is much more.


The Economic Times, 8 September, 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/NAC-in-hurry-need-more-time-Rural-ministry/articleshow/6515914.cms


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