‘Cabinet’s BPL norm recipe for political confrontation’

In the backdrop of adverse reactions against poverty lines filed by the Planning Commission in the Supreme court this week, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has described the below poverty line (BPL) household identification methodology “approved by the Cabinet” as “least justifiable on political grounds” and a “sure recipe for political confrontation”.

At the same time, he has conceded that it was the one with “best acceptability as far as administrative and fiscal considerations” go.

As an alternative, Ramesh has suggested his own methodology claiming it to be “the best as far as political acceptability is concerned” while it could be “worst on administrative and fiscal considerations”.

Ramesh’s observations have come in a communication to Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairperson of Planning Commission, on the issue of poverty lines and identification of poor where he has asserted that the “use of external poverty estimates as caps is not only impossible and undesirable, it is also wrong theoretically and empirically”.

In this context, he has identified fixing state-wise ceilings on poverty ratio and exclusion of households just above the poverty line cap level as the two major problems in exercise for identifying the group of poor households entitled to welfare provisions. Ramesh has presented pros and cons of three options — including the one approved by the Cabinet and two others presented by him — for identification of BPL households.

In his communication to Ahluwalia, he has outlined the broad contours of one option (Plan A) of identification of poor where everybody who is not automatically excluded will be part of the main list entitled for different government welfare provisions. The second option (Plan B) presented by Ramesh envisage flexible poverty line caps where households just above the poverty lines will be included in the BPL list provided the deprivation indicators match with those just on the poverty lines fixed by the Planning Commission. The third option (Plan C) is what the government had approved early this summer and paved the way for Socio-Economic and Caste Census to identify poor households on the basis of the principle of automatic exclusion and deprivation ranking of remaining other.