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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Socio Economic Caste Census: Has It Ignored Too Many Poor Households? -NC Saxena

Socio Economic Caste Census: Has It Ignored Too Many Poor Households? -NC Saxena

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published Published on Jul 26, 2015   modified Modified on Jul 26, 2015
-Economic and Political Weekly

A survey to identify who the poor are and how many are actually poor is necessary if programmes and benefits targeted at the needy are to reach them. The Socio Economic Caste Census, of which partial results have been published, was intended to do this. Yet, even a cursory look at the figures indicates that they call for a willing suspension of disbelief.

N C Saxena (naresh.saxena@gmail.com) was earlier Secretary with the Department of Rural Development.

Two questions are integral to any discussion on poverty: How many are poor, and who are the poor? Finding answers to these questions needs different approaches and methodologies. Whereas the number of poor can be fixed simply through a sample survey, identifying them would need visiting each and every household. While the Planning Commission was the official agency to estimate the percentage of population below the poverty line (BPL) once in five years based on the National Sample Survey on consumption expenditure, a census to identify BPL households has been conducted by the states through the Central Ministry of Rural Development three times (1992, 1997 and 2002) in the last 25 years. These surveys hardly attracted any media attention compared to the extent of debate that took place on the number of poor and fixing the poverty line. The primary purpose of conducting a village-wise census of poor households by contacting each one is to identify the deprived households that could be assisted under various programmes of the ministry. Such a survey is necessary if there are programmes and benefits exclusively targeted at the poor.

A large number of flagship programmes are universal, such as the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Mid-Day Meal (MDM), National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), and so on. Then there are programmes which could be called “BPL Plus,” such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY), the union government’s cashless health insurance scheme, and the construction of household toilets. Here, a subsidy is available to all BPL families, plus many others such as artisans, domestic workers (for RSBY), and small and marginal farmers, Scheduled Castes (SC), Scheduled Tribes (ST), and households headed by women (for toilets). The rural housing programme also gives weight to other indicators besides being BPL, such as being houseless, or belonging to particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PTG).

In the third category are programmes such as old age pensions, the public distribution system (PDS), and so on that are specifically directed at the BPL population. In addition, each state has a plethora of schemes that benefit BPL households. Hence, it is vital to evolve a workable methodology to separate them from the non-poor and identify them truthfully.

There has been acrimonious discussion in India about how many are poor, but not on the more important issue of who the poor are and how they are being identified. Many studies have shown that the practice of including those who should not be included, while excluding those who should be included, is widespread. Errors of exclusion are those that misclassify the poor in the non-poor category, while errors of inclusion include the non-poor in the poor category. According to the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–2012, Vol 2, Chapter 4), there are huge exclusion and inclusion errors in identifying the poor. More than half the poor in 2004–05 either had no card or were given above the poverty line (APL) cards and thus excluded from BPL benefits. These must presumably be the most poor tribal groups, women-headed households, and people living in remote hamlets where the administration does not reach. Thus the people most deserving of government help are deprived of such assistance. On the other hand, almost 60% of the BPL or Antyodaya cards had been given to households belonging to the non-poor category. There is a great deal of clamour among all people to benefit from government largesse, and the non-poor obviously are able to get their names included in the list by using political pressure or through bribes. Identifying the poor correctly and the criterion for inclusion are thus central to poverty alleviation.

Given the inadequacies pointed out by the state governments and others about the methodology followed in 2002 for identifying the poor, the Ministry of Rural Development constituted an expert group under my chairmanship in 2009 to recommend a more suitable methodology for conducting the next BPL census with simple, transparent, and objectively measurable indicators for identifying BPL households in rural areas for providing assistance under various programmes. My report submitted in August 2009 suggested dividing all rural households into three categories.

(i) Families who need to be automatically excluded, such as those owning three- or four-wheeled motorised vehicles, or mechanised farm equipment, or drawing a salary of more than Rs 10,000 per month, or employed by the government, or paying income tax.

(ii) The poorest such as the homeless, destitute households, PTGs, households with disabled persons as bread-earners, and bonded labourers to be automatically included.

(iii) The rest of the households to be graded on predetermined deprivations, and ranked accordingly.

The Ministry of Rural Development accepted the above categorisation with some changes. However, the most important recommendation of conducting the census and collecting information openly in gram sabha meetings that are filmed to promote transparency and avoid backdoor influences was not accepted. Instead, the ministry decided to send a surveyor to each person’s house to fill up a detailed form. It accepted the home ministry’s offer of combining the caste census with compiling data on economic deprivations, and the scheme was named the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC), the results of which have just been declared. Figures for urban areas and on caste are yet to be made public.

Errors or Inclusion/Exclusion?

The decennial census methodology is based on a concept that neither the respondent nor the surveyor has any vested interest in giving false information. In a case where inclusion determines access to many privileges, the temptation for a respondent to give false information to a surveyor, an outsider who has no knowledge of that village, is very high. The surveyor too may use this opportunity to extract a bribe for recording answers that may place the respondent in the category of the poor. Although, on paper, the surveyor’s information is to be checked by his supervisor and the sarpanch (village head), we all know how collusion between supervisors and ground staff encourages distortion in preparing lists of beneficiaries. Therefore, the chances of the SECC having large errors of inclusion and exclusion cannot be ruled out. There should have been greater transparency and closer involvement of gram sabhas and civil society in the identification process.

Two decisions taken by the last government are relevant to our discussion. First, on 3 October 2011, a joint statement was issued by the deputy chairman, Planning Commission, and the minister of rural development that said, “present state-wise poverty estimates using the Planning Commission methodology will not be used to impose any ceilings on the number of households to be included in different government programmes and schemes.” It meant that ministries and states are free to extend the benefits of targeted programmes to any number they like. Second, and in keeping with the spirit of the above decision, the government passed a Food Security Act in 2013 extending the benefits of subsidised food to 70% of the rural and 50% of the urban population, irrespective of that the percentage of BPL households was only 26% and 14% in these areas. This was in keeping with the reality that although the poverty line was in 2011–12 fixed at Rs 27 and Rs 33 per capita per day for rural and urban areas respectively (I call it the kutta-billi line, as only cats and dogs can survive on such a low income), 70% of rural and 50% of urban people lived below Rs 50 and Rs 70 per capita per day respectively, which was barely enough to meet all basic needs. Thus, the most important targeted programme, the PDS, was delinked from the Planning Commission numbers on poverty.

In line with the above decisions, the SECC survey rightly decided not to give any finding on the number of poor in any village or district or state. It was a door-to-door census covering the country to study the socio-economic status of each rural household, and to allow ranking households on the basis of pre-defined parameters, so that state government departments could objectively prepare lists of beneficiary families and decide their number according to their budgets and guidelines. It was expected that while doing so, they would first select all those who had to be compulsorily included, and then include those who suffer from all the seven deprivations, and then those with six, and so on. Of course, those who are not in these boxes may not get any benefit from government.

Reliability and Authenticity

We now come to the most important question—how reliable and authentic is the SECC data? One would be able to say only when the SECC lists are verified in the coming months by objective ground level tests by civil society and professional organisations. However, a cursory look at the macro data does raise some doubts about the methodology followed and the results obtained.

According to the press release, of 179.1 million households, those who were excluded on the basis of their assets or profession were as high as 70.5 million (39.39%), whereas the poorest of the poor to be automatically included were only 1.65 million (0.92%). This left 106.9 million households who were considered as deprived on the indicators given in Table 1, but strangely as many as 20 million households did not report any deprivation. This does hint that the deprivations were very narrowly defined, leaving out 20 million households who, despite not having sufficient income or assets to fit into any category of the compulsorily excluded, would not be entitled to any benefit from government.

It was expected that the list of deprivations on which households were measured would be comprehensive enough to include all rural households, leaving aside those who had been compulsorily included or excluded. In other words, the three categories in aggregate should have covered the entire rural population. Unfortunately, this has not happened, and the number of households not reporting any deprivation is as large as 20 million. It is, I would argue, because deprivations have been very narrowly defined.

For instance, according to the SECC, the total number of female-headed households as a percentage of all rural households was 12.83% (22.3 million) of the total, but of these, only 3.85% (6.9 million) satisfied the deprivation criteria of not having any adult male member between 16 and 59, thus excluding almost three-fourths of female-headed households from being considered for any government benefit. The narrow definition used in the SECC meant that a widow who is supporting her 17-year-old son’s education through petty cultivation is not to be considered for any government benefit. My committee had suggested the compulsory inclusion of all female-headed households in the list of deprived households. This was not accepted, but at least the definition should have included all female-headed households who do not have any working and earning male member in the family. The number of 6.9 million female-headed households who are considered deprived needs to be compared with two other figures, both collected by the SECC—18.1 million female-headed households where the monthly income of the highest earning household member is less than Rs 5,000, and 8.5 million female-headed households who are without mobile phones or landlines.

According to the SECC itself, 133.5 million households (74.5% of the total; 84% for SC and 87% for ST households) have a monthly income where the highest earning household member earns less than Rs 5,000, whereas households with any one of the seven deprivations is only 86.9 million. Does it mean that almost one-third of those earning less than Rs 5,000 (the Planning Commission’s poverty cut-off line was Rs 4,080 per month per household in 2011–12) do not have any deprivation? It is also surprising that even in rural Kerala where only 9% of the people are below the official poverty line, households with an income of less than Rs 5,000 is 70.5%, almost the same as in Uttar Pradesh (71.5%). In any case, it would have been better if the total household income was assessed, rather than just the income of the highest earning member of the household.

Under-enumeration of the Poorest

The most disturbing data is about the poorest households who had to be automatically and compulsorily included. These are households without shelter; destitute, living on alms; manual scavenger families; PTGs; and legally released bonded labour. Their total number is shown as only 1.65 million, or much less than 1% of all rural households in India, whereas Antyodaya card holders themselves are 25 million. This gross underestimation of the poorest of the poor does not tally with other government figures. For instance, the overall number of 1.65 million is far less than the number of homeless as estimated by the Ministry of Rural Development. The ministry’s target to provide Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) house for all rural homeless people in the next four years is 20 million families. However, the two definitions are different, leading to a wide disparity in figures. But should we not have worked on common definitions so that the results of the SECC can be operationalised in the field and IAY beneficiaries selected according to it, and not be subject to the pulls and pressures so common in the IAY scheme? The SECC is also not compatible with the Census of India 2011, which has 4.3% homeless households (7.4 million) in rural India while 39.4% (66 million) live in just one room. Against 66 million, the SECC has identified only 23.7 million households as deprived, which includes households with only one room, kuccha walls and kuccha roof.

A survey done by the Ministry of Labour in 2014 shows that there are no workers aged 15 years and above in about 5% of households (9 million). These households should have been automatically included in the deprived category. This number is only 6.9 million, or 3.8%, in the SECC. Coming to the number of manual scavengers, according to a Lok Sabha report, 7,70,000 manual scavengers and their dependents were identified by states and union territories while implementing the National Scheme of Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers and Their Dependants in 2007. The SECC admits far less, only 1,80,000. Mihir Shah, who as a Planning Commission member was in charge of rural development, thinks that the number of manual scavengers is greatly underreported, especially in certain states that remain in insistent denial about its existence (Indian Express, 10 July 2015), which in reality refuses to go away because of deeply entrenched social prejudices. While the 2011 Census lists 2,15,885 dry latrines in Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Manipur, the SECC reports a mere 653 manual scavengers in these states.

The inference is inescapable—the poorest have not been able to convince our enumerators to recognise them.

Overreporting of Rich

Whereas the poorest have gone largely unrecognised, there appears to be over-reporting on the number of rich households who were excluded from the survey if they fulfilled any of the 14 parameters of exclusion, such as owning a tractor or paying income tax, and so on. Their number is reported as 70.5 million. If we add the 20 million households who did not have any deprivation, those excluded from all government benefits would come to 90.5 million or more than half the rural population. What is the justification in giving a food subsidy to 70% households if more than half of them are quite prosperous? Interestingly, the BPL pilot survey had indicated that only 28% households would be excluded, but the actual exclusion is more than half of all rural households.

Again, the details show many anomalies. The indicators in the “automatic exclusion” call for some discussion. Owning a motorised two-wheeler, for example, is an inaccurate measure of “richness” considering it could have been obtained as dowry or bought on credit. Many tribal households receiving compensation for being displaced from land tend to buy a motorcycle, which after some time gets sold out in distress. Incidentally, our committee did not include owners of two-wheelers in this category.

The number of rural households with regular government jobs is shown as 8.96 million, excluding contractual employees such as anganwadi workers and para teachers. This needs to be compared with the total number of government servants in India, which as per the labour ministry is 17.6 million, including all categories. Do we then conclude that the families of more than half the government servants live in rural areas?

These are my initial reactions. Either the definitions of deprivations are deliberately kept narrow to exclude a large number of people, or the enumerators have lived up to their past reputation of colluding with the rich. In the process, a large number of poor people will be denied access to targeted programmes. The government has not been able to eliminate poverty, but it has certainly succeeded in eliminating the poor from its radar.

I will be happy if I am proved wrong by detailed ground-level analysis and verification. If the list is correctly prepared and to the satisfaction of the rural people, it can certainly eliminate leakages and errors of inclusion and exclusion, so common in welfare programmes. Let us hope that the process has been immune to political or local interference and the rich and powerful have not tampered with the list.

Interestingly, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food, and Public Distribution has been pestering states to revise their lists of entitlements for subsidised food as per the SECC figures (these have been available for many states for the last six months or more) so that they can be entitled to enhanced quotas under the National Food Security Act. However, the states have been dragging their feet, wishing to continue with the old list prepared in 2002 and revised from time to time. Whether this is due to pressure exerted by old beneficiaries who have a vested interest, or that the states doubt the findings of the SECC, which they themselves collected, is not known.

Economic and Political Weekly, Vol-L, No. 30, July 25, 2015, http://www.epw.in/commentary/socio-economic-caste-census.html


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