PRO-POOR PROGRAMMES: GETTING THE DETAILS RIGHT 

Most people who can read and write would likely fall outside the ambit of poverty alleviation programmes of our government; very few of us have actually applied for a subsidised housing programme or guaranteed employment schemes. But we talk about them, aware that there is tremendous inequity in our country, and that somehow there must be a way for the rising tide of prosperity to lift all boats. Half-ridden with guilt and half-riddled with ignorance, we therefore allow our governments to contemplate new programmes, those that promise – yet again – not to leave anyone behind. 

The passage of the Employment Guarantee Act has accompanied by so much discussion about delivery challenges that “delivery” has become a buzzword. We urgently need to focus on the details of what this means. However, a small aside is warranted: the need to get away from the artificial urban-rural divide. The term “urban elite and rural poor” is a myth, and the facts are deeply troubling: in 2001, there were 100 million urban poor citizens of India - larger than the population of Germany, France or the UK – who are getting lost in the penumbra of the spotlight on the rural poor. 

Turning to delivery issues on poverty programmes, this column is about one such detail. Every pro-poor programme - whether for subsidised food supplies, housing or livelihood – begins with a simple question: “How do we determine who is poor?” There is a term called BPL, meaning “Below Poverty Line”. Without getting into technicalities, it is defined in terms of calories of food intake per person per day; but because this cannot be measured, it is translated into an income figure, which is different for different states. As a rough approximate, an annual income of less than Rs. 20,000 will qualify a family to be BPL. 

But the poor don’t pay taxes, or file returns; their incomes are invariably sporadic, cash-based, seasonal and so on. Hence, income needs to be substituted with another measure.

Let us take one department - Food and Civil Supplies, which gives out ration cards - as an example. The department uses “proxies” for income: dwelling type, construction materials used, the presence of a toilet, an electrical connection, and so on: a total of about 40 such parameters.

This information now has to be collected; since the agency has minimal staff, this is often outsourced. Many of the parameters are quite subjective, and difficult to verify. In addition to the collection difficulties, this data has to be maintained and updated, for lakhs of records. How does this data get stored? How are changes made? How often? What if someone dies, what if they move within the same area, or migrate? Simple logistical questions that find few answers. 

What I have just described is for one department. If another department needs a BPL list for its own special programme - say, housing - it generates a separate BPL list. In Karnataka for example, there are 6 lists of citizens being maintained by different arms of the government. A recent study showed that only 6% of the names were common across 3 such BPL lists!

One can imagine the pressure being applied to add names to the BPL list. Often, this is not an objective enumeration exercise, but rather resembles a “friends and family list” of the local patron. 

Passing Right-to-Information (RTI) legislation will not solve the fundamental detailing problems listed above; while RTI is path-breaking legislation, it cannot be seen as the panacea for all problems.

 Specifically, there are two fundamental weaknesses with the BPL approach. The first is to do with the methodology itself. Even if there were a single BPL list, the concept of an imaginary “line” that can adequately capture the vulnerability of the poor is at odds with the complex realities that face them. The poor don’t elegantly rise above the “poverty line” in some clinical manner; they slip and slide around with different degrees of vulnerability for a while. The Kerala government’s Kutumbashree programme has developed the concept of a “Poverty Scale” that measures vulnerability on 10-point scale: the poorest are exposed to the greatest number of factors, the less poor have fewer vulnerabilities. Such a Poverty Scale captures this exposure far better than the Poverty Line, with more appropriately designed programmes. For example, those at the upper end could get insurance support to prevent them from sliding back. 

The second weakness is about how such BPL – or Poverty Scale – records are created and updated. Giving this to government servants is tantamount to legitimising corruption and patronage; beneficiary identification is among the most potent forms of largesse in government today. On the contrary, many local communities know who among them is poor, who has lost a husband, who hasn’t had a meal. Legitimate political platforms like the Grama Sabhas in rural areas can be mandated to maintain the Poverty Scale lists; urban areas need similar platforms at the grassroot level, and the proposed National Urban Renewal Mission holds promise in this regard. 

Fixing the beneficiary identification issue is not a silver bullet to improve delivery; there are several other wide-ranging debilities. However, the beneficiary list is illustrative of the details that determine the success of programmes that leave with the passport of political sanction from New Delhi and often get lost in the bylanes of bureaucracy. Unfortunately, because fixing the details is not easy, we end up measuring “inputs” rather than “outcomes”: how much money was spent on a new poverty alleviation programme rather than how many people are coming out of poverty, how many schools were built, rather than what are our scholastic levels are, and so on. 

With the kind of money being pumped into poverty programmes, genuine debate across the political spectrum is needed about the details of delivery. If not, all these ideas will get choked in the thickets of the system, making our reforms look like our electricity supply: plenty of transmission and distribution losses.
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The author is founder of Janaagraha. He can be reached at ramesh@janaagraha.org