Are wrong numbers failing the poor?

The apex court's demand to the Planning Commission on Wednesday as to how it could limit the number of below-poverty-line (BPL) families in a State to 36 per cent in 2011 by relying on data from the 1991 Census has not come a day too soon for several reasons.

By an ironical coincidence, the timing of the ruling has startled the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government.

First, it has come a day ahead of the full meeting of the Planning Commission, slated for Thursday, which was expected to provide inputs for the Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan, beginning from April 1, 2012.

Second, it came on a day when the Plan panel Deputy Chairman, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, endorsed the assessment of Plan panel Member, Dr Abhijit Sen, who estimated a decline of five percentage points from 37.2 per cent to 32 per cent in the extant BPL figures.

No doubt, the Plan panel would definitely be happy to go with the revised BPL estimates as they would come in handy to make a dent in the Centre's bloating food subsidy bill. But the Supreme Court Bench of Justices, Mr Dalveeer Bhandari and Mr Deepak Verma, which was scrutinising the affidavits filed by various State Governments aptly said the BPL percentage in the country is much more than the 36 per cent fixed by the Planning Commission.

In fact, the State Governments were seeking more foodgrains for distribution among the BPL and above-poverty-line (APL) families in their respective States, dissatisfied with the 36 per cent estimates, when they had more poor families in their midst to feed and safeguard.

The apex court pertinently asked how such a meagre limit could be fixed when the per capita income varied from State to State and also questioned the criteria fixing the per capita daily income of Rs 20 in urban areas and Rs 11 in rural areas to determine the BPL category.

It is not that the Plan panel has any dearth of poverty estimates in the country that its limit was open to doubt, but over the years several such estimates made by the authorities have only served to boggle analysts as to the accuracy of each estimate.

With inclusive growth and poverty reduction being the principal pillars of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan which is running its final year, the Plan panel could ill-afford to be complacent in its basic remit of reckoning the number of people in the country living on the margins.

The surfeit of surveys on poverty do not bring about real reduction in endemic poverty unless it goes hand in hand with ground-level action, development economists said, adding that the UPA Government, with its rights-based approach to development, would be in for big trouble if it failed to glean relevant information on poverty across the country.

There is a touch of hard-core realism and not homily on the part of the apex court when it curtly observed that, “What is this stark contradiction in our whole approach in eradication of malnutrition? You say you are a powerful country but at the same time, starvation deaths are taking place in various parts of the country.”

The judges also questioned the logic of the Government contending that there was adequate foodgrains in the country when thousands of people die due to starvation and malnutrition.

As the Government is about to wrap up the contours and contents of the National Food Security Bill (NFSB) to give assured grains to people by way of entitlements, it is time the growing gap between official estimates of poverty and the reality is closed so that the legions of the poorest of the poor families are the genuine beneficiaries of welfare legislation, policy analysts hopefully say.

>geeyes@thehindu.co.in

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