Inverse cone priority

The World Bank uses an income cut off of Rs 21.6 per day in urban areas and Rs 14.3 per day in rural areas (at 2005 prices) to define who is poor. For 2005, based on these income cut offs, the World Bank estimates that 42 per cent of Indians had incomes that placed them below the poverty line.

Lees than 1/2 or 1/3 of dollar per day



Delhi looks to Kerala


Poverty protest
New Delhi, Oct. 14: A badly off family made up of a widow, her disabled son and ailing, elderly in-laws may now be



denied below-poverty-line status

if they have a TV or refrigerator.

They, however, would be a shoo-in under a model introduced recently in Kerala by the state government.

The Centre now plans to take lessons from Kerala to rework its all-India criteria to identify the poor. The revised norms could see millions of deserving families make the below-poverty-line (BPL) grade and thus be eligible for help they crucially need, rural development ministry officials say.

For instance, only 12.72 per cent of Kerala’s population make the BPL list under the Centre’s all-India norms, last revised in 2002. The figure trebles to 36 per cent (of Kerala’s population) under the Kerala model, developed as a “protest” against the central model.

Experts and social activists have long alleged that the Centre’s criteria are “insensitive”, programmed to make the Indian poverty scene look rosier. The ministry has now set up an expert committee that has asked Kerala to make a presentation this week on its “more realistic and more sensitive” criteria.

The central criteria considers 13 socio-economic parameters such as operational landholding, housing, clothing, food security, sanitation, ownership of consumer durables such as TV, literacy, means of livelihood, number of children, type of indebtedness, etc. Under this model, a good showing on one or two criteria can be used to rule out families from the BPL category.

The Kerala model, too, rules out families from the poverty list, but only if they have members who are regular employees of public/private/co-operative institutions, if they have a concrete house with a plinth area of 100sqft or more, or one acre of land, or a four-wheel vehicle for private use, or an NRI member.

Once these families are excluded, the Kerala model gives “weightage marks” to the rest of the households based on several indicators.

For instance, a family gets marks based on whether it is headed by a woman, whether it has an unwed mother or abandoned widow, or a member with chronic illness, a school dropout under 20 years, members above 65, or physically or mentally challenged members.

The model also considers whether a family has land for housing, whether it has a house, whether the dwelling is a hut or a partially complete or dilapidated house. It takes into account whether the family has a sanitary latrine, an electricity connection and whether drinking water is available within 500m.

Each household is given a score on each count and the marks are added, the aggregate lying between zero and 100. Based on the sum total, the state government decides how much priority a family should be given under its various poverty alleviation programmes.

“The Kerala model is progressive and sensitive. There, poverty is understood in its totality,” a rural development ministry official said.

He added that since Kerala had the best social indicators among states, the model might need a little tailoring while being applied to the rest of India.