When benefits do not reach the poor

“Deprivation is the major problem in Gujarat where Chief Minister Narendra Modi boasts of growth, and prides himself on Gujarati ashmita (identity). But Modi’s government is not pro-poor, he has different priorities,” said sociologist and anthropologist Jan Breman, emeritus professor at the University of Amsterdam.

Delivering the T.G. Narayanan Memorial Lecture, 2013, entitled “Caring for destitution or not” in Chennai, recently, he criticised the Gujarat government and said that the entitlements meant for the labour-less destitute – widows, the disabled, and the elderly – had hardly reached the beneficiaries. The identification pattern, bureaucratic procedures, hard-to-match government criteria for the targeted group had excluded a large section of society from claiming their legal right, he claimed.

“The moral standard of state and society can be deduced from the way people are treated who are not productive anymore and have no assets of their own.”

Bremen, a specialist in South and South-east Asian Studies, came to India for the first time when he visited south Gujarat in the 1960s as a Ph.D. candidate – since then he has visited regularly.

T.G. Narayanan was The Hindu’s Rangoon correspondent in 1939. Later on, he extensively covered the Bengal famine and, as a diplomat, participated in the negotiations for disarmament on behalf of the United Nations.

Bremen’s anthropological research focussed on four villages of Gujarat. Out of the identified 589 (including 28 disabled) labour-less destitute who had lost their capability or ability to work, he found that only 118 met the criteria stipulated by the government for the pension scheme. At last, 38 people (nearly one out of 15) started to receive benefits from the government. Among the beneficiaries, not one person was disabled, since eligibility criteria were rigid (the state asks for 80 per cent disability), he said

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has asked the government to relax the eligibility criteria for various schemes under the National Social Assistance Programme.

On the higher number of women among the vulnerable, the professor stated, “This destitution had a gender bias. Out of 589, 350 were either widows or deserted women.”

Taking a dig at the eligibility criteria for various welfare schemes, he remarked, “To be entitled to get the old age pension you should not have an adult son; to avail widow pension, you are required to earn less than Rs 200 per month. Above all, the pre-condition is that they be listed under BPL roll.”

“In Modi’s Gujarat, he thinks that for a widow Rs 200 for a month is enough for sustenance. Is it really inclusive growth?” he asked.

Sharing the tragic tales of the elderly, he pointed out that having an adult son did not perforce ensure the certitude of food for them.

“Today, people take care of the generation after, not before,” he said, adding: “Despite higher growth rate, Gujarat ranks dismally low on the human development index.”

Breman articulated his polemics against the welfare fair in Gujarat and said, “The garib kaliyan mela (welfare fair for the poor) is held in every district of Gujarat. Modi distributes gifts and decides who gets benefit. These are not entitlements. He is exercising his discretionary powers. What have been announced as statutory rights are downgraded as favours and doles in practice.”

Pointing out the exclusionary approach of the state government to contort below poverty line numbers, he stated that figures were manipulated to show less number of poor people and to present a glossy picture of “vibrant Gujarat”.

His diagnosis was very simple to rid India of its capitalist trajectory of growth: First, a pro-poor government which does not marginalise the destitute and paupers; second, the active participation of civil society, mediating between state and people, since people do not know about welfare schemes; third, assertive poor and their active participation in the electoral process.

“Jointly, these conditionalities seem to be operative in the best cases that happen to be located in south India”, Breman pointed out.

Breman went back to Gujarat to meet the 38 beneficiaries. “When I asked them if anything has changed after getting cash from the government, they (the elderly and widows) said ‘Now we have a modicum of dignity. We are not seen as burden on our family. We are treated as human beings.’ ”

“The effective and efficient implementation of entitlements will help the destitute,” he concluded.

(Pushpa did BA from Bikaner University, Rajasthan, before going on to study at the Asian College of Journalism.)

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