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Lingarajpuram, a poor village in India

Below Poverty Line is an economic benchmark used by the government of India to indicate economic disadvantage and to identify individuals and households in need of government assistance and aid. It is determined using various parameters which vary from state to state and within states. The present criteria are based on a survey conducted in 2002. Going into a survey due for a decade, India's central government is undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line.^[1]

Internationally, an income of less than $1.90 per day per head of purchasing power parity is defined as extreme poverty. By this estimate, about 21.2% of Indians are extremely poor. Income-based poverty lines consider the bare minimum income to provide basic food requirements; it does not account for other essentials such as health care and education.^[2]

Measurement

Criteria are different for the rural and urban areas. In its Tenth Five-Year Plan, the degree of deprivation is measured with the help of parameters with scores given from 0–4, with 13 parameters. Families with 17 marks or less (formerly 15 marks or less) out of a maximum 52 marks have been classified as BPL.Poverty line solely depends on the per capital income in India rather than level of prices.^[3][4]

Ninth Plan

In its Ninth Five-Year Plan (1995–2002), BPL for rural areas was set at annual family income less than Rs. 20,000, less than two hectares land, and no television or refrigerator. The number of rural BPL families was 650,000 during the 9th Plan. The survey based on this criterion was again carried out in 2002 and the total number of 387,000 families were identified. This figure was in force until September 2006.^[3]

Tenth Plan (2002–2007)

In its Tenth Five-Year Plan (2002–2007) survey, BPL for rural areas was based on the degree of deprivation in respect of 13 parameters, with scores from 0–4: landholding, type of house, clothing, food security, sanitation, consumer durables, literacy status, labour force, means of livelihood, status of children, type of indebtedness, reasons for migrations, etc.

The Planning Commission fixed an upper limit of 326,000 for rural BPL families on the basis of simple survey. Accordingly, families having less than 15 marks out of maximum 52 marks have been classified as BPL and their number works out to 318,000. The survey was carried out in 2002 and thereafter but could not be finalised due to a stay issued by the Supreme Court of India. The stay was vacated in February 2006 and this survey was finalised and adopted in September 2006. This survey formed the basis for benefits under government of India schemes. The state governments are free to adopt any criteria/survey for state-level schemes.^[3]

In its Tenth Five-Year Plan BPL for urban areas was based on degree of deprivation in respect of seven parameters: roof, floor, water, sanitation, education level, type of employment, and status of children in a house. A total of 125,000 upper families were identified as BPL in urban area in 2004. It has been implemented since then.^[3]

Those spending over Rs 32 a day in rural areas and Rs 47 in towns and cities should not be considered poor, an expert panel headed by former RBI governor C Rangarajan said in a report submitted to the BJP government last week.
The recommendation, which comes just ahead of the budget session of Parliament, is expected to generate fresh debate over the poverty measure as the committee's report has only raised the bar marginally.

Based on the Suresh Tendulkar panel's recommendations in 2011-12, the poverty line had been fixed at Rs 27 in rural areas and Rs 33 in urban areas, levels at which getting two meals may be difficult.

The Rangarajan committee was tasked with revisiting the Tendulkar formula for estimation of poverty and identification of the poor after a massive public outcry erupted over the abnormally low poverty lines fixed by UPA government

Kerala

The Government of Kerala is one of the few state governments which has formulated its own criteria.

In Kerala there are nine parameters. Families which lack access to four or more parameters are classified as BPL.

The nine parameters for urban areas are:

• No land or less than five cents of land


• No house or dilapidated house


• No sanitation latrine
  


• Family with an illiterate family member


• No regular employed person in the family


• No access to safe drinking water
  


• Women-headed household or presence of widows or divorcee


• 
  Scheduled castes and scheduled tribes (SC/ST)


• 
  Mentally retarded or disabled member in the family

Income based poverty line in India

The poverty line was originally fixed in terms of income/food requirements in 2000. It was stipulated that the calorie standard for a typical individual in rural areas was 2400 calorie and was 2100 calorie in urban areas. Then the cost of the grains (about 650 g) that fulfil this normative standard was calculated. This cost was the poverty line. In 1978, it was Rs.61.80 per person per month for rural areas and Rs.71.30 for urban areas. Since then the Planning Commission calculates the poverty line every year adjusting for inflation. The poverty line in recent years is as follows –
(Rs. per month per head)

This income is bare minimum to support the food requirements and does not provide much for the other basic essential items like health, education etc. That is why some times the poverty lines have been described as starvation lines.^[3]

Fixing of cut-off marks at 17

The Socio Economic Survey conducted during 2002 was based on 13 Socio economic
indicators (enlisted by Government of India ) indicating the quality of life and by Score-based ranking for all households. Each of the indicators have 0–4 marks. Thus for 13 indicators, the tentative marks obtained by the families are from 0–52 for all the Districts. The Supreme Court of India in Writ Petition No. 196/2001 filed by People's Union for Civil Liberties, the result of Below Poverty Line census 2002 need not be finalised. Later in October 2005 the Government of India informed that based on the advice given by the Additional Solicitor General, it has been decided to finalise the results of Below Poverty Line Census 2002 without deleting the Below Poverty Line families already existing in the Below Poverty Line list of Below Poverty Line Census 1997 and to follow the following procedure for finalisation of Below Poverty Line list.

1. Preparation of Below Poverty Line list


2. Approval in Gram Sabha
   


3. Appeal to Block Development Officer and Collector.


4. Display of Final List

The Government of India then decided that the Below Poverty Line list for 2002 could be finalised as per original guidelines. The Director of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj stated that in the Below Poverty Line survey done in 1991 out of 8,433,000 Rural families 3,446,000 families were identified as Below Poverty Line families. In the Below Poverty Line survey done in the year 1999 out of 9,388,000 rural families 2,737,000 families were identified as Below Poverty Line families. He has stated that if the cut off mark is fixed as 16 the total number of families would be 2,548,000
families against the total families of 8,665,000 which is lesser than the number of families indicated by Government of India viz. 2,677,000 families. If the cut off mark is fixed as 17 marks, then the total the number of Below Poverty line families would be 3,051,000. This is marginally above the number of families indicated by Government of India. i.e. 2,677,000 families. He has therefore recommended that the cut off marks to arrive at the number of Below Poverty Line families may be fixed at 17 so that no Below Poverty Line family gets left out of the list and requested orders of
Government in this regard. The Government after detailed examination has decided to accept the proposal of the Director of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj and accordingly order to fix the cut off mark as 17 for identification of a family as Below Poverty Line family.8. The Director of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj is requested to take necessary
further action for finalisation of Below Poverty Line List for rural areas of this state as per the procedure laid down by Government of India.^[4]

Example

A Bench Mark Survey conducted in Maharashtra in 1997–1998 found 91.08%^[5]Madia Gond families BPL. Madia Gond are a people classified as primitive tribe, they live in Bhamragad Taluka, of Gadchiroli District, of Maharashtra.

Criticism of BPL criteria

Marxist Communist party member and Social activist Mariam Dhavale, State secretary of the All India Democratic Women's Association (AIDWA), finds the criteria for determining BPL status puzzling and one that excludes the deserving.

Example of mis-use of BPL Schemes

Corruption in the system allows those ineligible to gain benefits of the BPL status. A chain of corruption exists between the Government officer to the government appointed retailer resulting in grain and fuel been diverted to the black market^[6]

In some places, it has been reported that for the sake of their votes, some corrupt MLA's and officials made government employees gain benefits under BPL scheme. An approach to combat corruption is to attempt linkage with Aadhar

New survey

Central Government took a departure from the earlier practice of getting surveys conducted by the rural development machinery of different State Governments, for identification of families below the poverty line. The earlier practice, of identifying a single set of target families for all developmental programmes, has been done away with. This was partly necessitated by an interim stay order given by the Supreme Court for 10th and 11th five year plans.The trend is now increasingly to have development schemes run on the principle of universalisation or saturation or self-selection. This means following a priority list for each scheme, rather than following a single list of identified families for all schemes. For example, the people who put in manual work under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act need not belong to families below the poverty line. Whoever is within the specified age bracket and is willing to get enrolled, can get covered. Similarly, the beneficiaries under National Food Security Act are identified by the State/UT Governments, with the ceiling/ coverage under TPDS determined for each State/UT by the central Government. This list of families can be different from the priority list used for rural housing programmes under Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Grameen), which runs on the basis of whether a person has or does not have a pucca house, based on SECC survey of 2011. Similarly, the rural electrification programme Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana had the concept of below poverty line families. But the new approach of Soubhagya scheme is to make no discrimination based on the poverty line, but to go on the basis of households that do not have electricity connection. In the maternity benefit scheme renamed as Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, there is automatic and universal coverage, without any mention of whether a pregnant woman is below the poverty line or not. ( See Ministry of Women and Child Development at http://www.wcd.nic.in/sites/default/files/PMMVY%20Scheme%20Implemetation%20Guidelines%20._0.pdf) However, there is still lack of clarity on fully integrating SECC data of 2011 with old age pension/ widow pension/ disability pension schemes. This is because the guidelines of National Social Assistance Programme still speak about list of families below the poverty line. (See http://nsap.nic.in/Guidelines/nsap_guidelines_oct2014.pdf) Thus, by and large, the present position is that while SECC database of 2011 provides a basic skeleton, each developmental scheme is now run independently based on the necessity, rather than getting bogged down to one single list of targeted families.

See also

• Famine in India


• Malnutrition in India

References