Government’s plan to not recognise families with Rs 10,000 in a/c as 'poor' is problematic
A report in the Times of India published on November 17 says that the Narendra Modi government is planning to bring in a fresh set of parameters to assess poverty in village panchayats. Crucially, one of those would be whether or not a family has a minimum balance of Rs 10,000 in savings account, which would be deemed healthy, and might help the government in removing the below poverty line (BPL) tag from the family, thereby improving the “panchayat’s prospects of being rated positively on the poverty index”.
The ToI report says that the government is mulling criteria to determine “economic development”, so as to “evaluate neediness” of the families and the village panchayat, and one of the measures to ascertain that would be the Rs 10,000 minimum threshold in savings bank accounts, the possession of which would be read as being fit to be tagged non-BPL.
The report says the government has identified 21 parameters that the rural development ministry would adopt to measure the poverty status of village panchayats. A new scheme under Mission Antodaya has been carved to create at least “50,000 poverty-free panchayats”.
The other parameters include “bank loans for diversified livelihoods”, “employed in dairy and animal resources, “prevalence of malnutrition”, “number of girls completing secondary education and skilling courses”, “all-weather roads”, “internet connectivity and banking correspondent”, “open defecation free”, “community waste disposal system”, “safe houses”, among others.
While the target is to include 50,000 gram panchayats (GPs) in this “poverty elimination” scheme, 5,000 clusters will be overseen for carrying out “development work” under Mission Antodaya. This is part of the ministry’s “three-pronged assessment scale” based on “infrastructure”, “social development and protection” and “economic development and diversification of livelihoods”, according to the report.
Noble cause, flawed method
While it sounds wonderful on paper, in practice the Rs 10,000 threshold balance as a parameter to exclude a family from the BPL umbrella is not only problematic, it’s excruciatingly misjudged. In fact, according to the TOI report, the threshold was lowered from Rs 20,000 minimum balance, which was being initially considered by the rural development ministry but was dropped in favour of Rs 10,000.
Already, Aadhaar-based exclusions are bringing to fore the injustice meted out to the poor in rural swathes of Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, where rations under PDS are being linked to the 12-digit unique identity number that needs biometric authentication. The Aadhaar-based biometric authentication (ABBA) is being exposed as a system riddled with extreme irregularities that’s ritually blocking BPL families from accessing food grains, kerosene, etc, leading to starvation deaths, as in the case of 11-year-old Santoshi in Jharkhand.
While the other parameters are worthwhile, the minimum balance criterion is awfully divorced from reality, in the face of price rise, seasonal unemployment, rural to urban internal migration, urbanisation, movement of labour from agriculture to manufacturing and construction services in urban pockets, transport, etc, which turns the employment generation a discontinuous pattern. Fluctuations in sources and amount of income earned mean that savings accounts for many in rural and semi-urban setups are meant for a really rainy day, and a minimum balance of Rs 10,000 isn’t reflective of either steady inflow of deposits, not steady income for the account holder.
For example, the minimum balance of Rs 10,000 in an account of a person earning Rs 30,000 in a city like Delhi isn’t the same as a standing, untouched deposit of Rs 15,000 in an account of a person who has a savings deposit in a rural bank branch, and works in the city earning barely Rs 5000-8,000 per month. Such is the life of millions of construction workers and daily wage labourers in the country, even though the government is mulling on increasing the minimum wage.
Under MGNREGA, the government is responsible for generating 100 days of employment per year for rural workers, under/un-employed farmers working in others fields, or with too small land holdings for year-round agriculture. An MGNREGA wage earner might have opened a bank account under Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (Jan Dhan account), but a saving of Rs 10,000 would be the sole treasure that the family would have, in case they do. Depriving the family of BPL-tagged services because that meagre savings would not only be errant, it would be a gross injustice and intentional exclusion.
As Jean Dreze writes in the introduction of his new book Sense and Solidarity: Jholawala Economics for Everyone: “In India, as elsewhere, the privileged tend to nurture the illusion that they "deserve" what they have. Bases of privilege have little to do with personal metric: our aptitudes, health, inheritance, social connections. And other assets from contingencies... over which we have no control”.
While it’s important to conduct field studies and incentivise villages to diversify sources of livelihoods with government help, a low minimum threshold only makes life that much harder for the poor, who get cut off from the PDS network and welfare economy because of an arbitrary limit. It’s a lot like the out-of-touch political leaders who say that one can get a good meal for Rs 10 in India, without actually ever bothering to find out the real prices of food items.
Poverty elimination and prestige
While the government wants to meet a target of lifting 50,000 villages out of poverty through the scheme under Mission Antodaya, it is doing so not by actually undertaking overall development of the villages, and ensuring greater, more diverse and sustainable sources of employment for the people, but by moving the goalpost closer.
It would seem that the government wants to be seen doing good things as a matter of prestige, as is evident from the repeated "surveys" conveying the Prime Minister’s popularity in the country, or the mood-lifts through intangible numbers of ratings agencies even as jobs are lost, unemployment is high, economy in shock and recovery slow.
In fact, the minimum Rs 10,000 threshold in lieu of the welfare services, food subsidies, free compulsory education, mid-day meals, that the “poverty” tag entitles a family to, will be in violation of the right to food, livelihood, education, health, life liberty, movement, among others. By rebranding the poor as not poor because they have saved up a little for a really hard day is simply unacceptable.