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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Net connection excluded from urban poor count -Sobhana K

Net connection excluded from urban poor count -Sobhana K

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published Published on Jul 16, 2013   modified Modified on Jul 16, 2013
-The Telegraph


New Delhi: Over half of India's urban residents can be called poor.

The housing ministry has moved a cabinet note that has classified nearly 52 per cent of town and city dwellers as poor after a socio-economic caste census that is "99 per cent" complete.

The ministry has also dropped a criterion from the list of parameters an expert committee had suggested to automatically count in and count out households from the urban poverty list.

"On the basis of juxtaposing the urban poor identification (criteria) that we have decided and the social caste census data that we have at present, nearly 52 per cent of the urban population can be categorised as urban poor," said a ministry official.

Call it a coincidence, the 52 per cent figure matches with the percentage of urban residents the proposed food security bill plans to cover.

The food security ordinance the cabinet recently cleared guarantees 50 per cent of the urban population and 75 per cent of the rural poor the legal right to subsidised food grain. The ordinance has to be cleared within six months, so the bill has to be tabled in the monsoon session scheduled to begin next month.

Sources in the housing ministry said they wanted to notify the identification criteria for the urban poor before the food security bill is tabled. "We are ready, the figures will vary very little, so we decided to go to the cabinet," said an official, explaining why the ministry decided to go ahead with the cabinet note when the social and economic caste census was 99 per cent complete.

The ministry has dropped "computer or laptop with Internet" connection from the exclusion criteria the S.R. Hashim Committee report had suggested. "The recent slum census of 2011 reveals that at least 10.4 per cent of households have computers. It does not mean they are rich, it merely means the family must have sacrificed other needs to buy a computer," said an official.

Ministry officials said they felt the need to go ahead with the new identification criteria because no uniform pattern is followed for identifying BPL (below poverty line) families in urban areas.

"In Delhi, for example, the government said they would roll out the food security bill with a 5-lakh population. There will be a hue and cry since a huge section will be left untouched. In urban areas, less than 25 per cent are now considered in the BPL category, though actually that is not the case," said an official.

The Hashim panel report had suggested a three-stage process for identifying the urban poor: automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and a scoring index based on three vulnerabilities - residential, occupational and social.

The panel had noted that any household possessing either a four-wheeler, an air-conditioner or a computer or laptop with Internet connection wouldn't be considered poor.

In case of automatic inclusion, any household headed by a child would be considered poor. So would a household where earning adults are engaged in vulnerable occupations like begging, rag-picking, domestic help, or sanitation.

As for the scoring index based on the vulnerabilities, a score of zero would exclude the household from the poverty list. The higher the score - 12 is the highest - the higher the priority for inclusion in the BPL list.

Dalits and tribals are among the socially vulnerable; thatched/ mud/ grass homes or those with polythene/ plastic sheets for roof or walls would qualify residents as vulnerable; while street vendors, cobblers, plumbers and even tailors had been included on the vulnerable occupations' list.


The Telegraph, 15 July, 2013, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130716/jsp/nation/story_17121918.jsp#.UeTlR6zcjco


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