More on Delinking Poverty and Government Welfare Programes: UPA's Shift Towards Multi-Dimensional Analysis of Poverty

Mihir Shah, Member Planning Commission attempted to dispel some of the confusion around the official poverty line adopted by the Commission through this piece in The Hindu.

In, what I would call a minimalist, defence of the Planning Commission Poverty Line, Mihir Shah argues:

“All that the Planning Commission has done is to use the most credible source of consumption data available in the country (the National Sample Survey Organisation) to compute poverty estimates that are both on parity with international standards and enable comparisons within India over time and across States. There is no value judgment being made about the adequacy of this amount of money for any meaningful purpose. All that is being done is to provide an estimate (using the very same methodology) that allows one to compare the number of people below a certain consumption level (aka poverty line) in 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2011-12. Nothing more, nothing less.”

He further goes on to aver that:

“What is even more important, however, is to clarify what the poverty line does not signify. Contrary to popular misunderstanding, there is no suggestion whatsoever that the benefits of government programmes will be restricted to those below this poverty line.”

It is important to note that Mihir Shah makes a quasi-official acknowledgement of the need for de-linking welfare programme from poverty line given the limited informational focus of the latter. In fact, he explained the key elements of the ambitious plans of the UPA Government to gradually move away from a uniform poverty line to use of multiple benchmarks for welfare programme through the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC).

“the incontrovertibly clear landmark contribution made by the UPA-II government is that for the first time in the last 20 years, the poverty line has been delinked from entitlements of the people of India. Indeed, with the 12th Plan, this government has taken the first steps in acknowledging that poverty is a multi-dimensional concept that cannot be reduced to consumption expenditure alone. To illustrate, till now if you were to be regarded as a beneficiary of the Indira Awaas Yojana (IAY) or the Total Sanitation Campaign, you needed to possess a BPL card. The distribution of these cards was plagued by humungous errors of inclusion and exclusion, such that many of the really poor would not be included but those with muscle power at the local level managed to hustle BPL cards even if they were not poor.

During the 12th Plan, all this is poised to change with the enshrining of the principle — “programme-specific indicators for programme-specific entitlements.” This is a clear recognition that poverty has many dimensions, each of which is to be tackled by different programmes and the benefits of each programme will either be universal (as in MGNREGA, health, primary education, sanitation, mid-day meals, etc.) or be based on data on specific deprivations such as homelessness.

The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) conducted by the Government of India, in partnership with all State Governments, is nearing completion. The SECC data will be presented in gram and ward sabhas across the country over the next few months and this will enable a kind of social audit of this data and foster citizen awareness and participation in the process. The SECC contains invaluable information on homelessness, manual scavenging, disability and a host of other deprivations, all of which are major constituents of poverty. These will be used to identify the people entitled to specific benefits. Thus, the homeless will be the beneficiaries of IAY and the disabled will get disability pensions, irrespective of whether or not they have a BPL card. The food security legislation will cover 67 per cent Indians, which is more than three times the number of people living below the consumption poverty line (22 per cent).”

This shift would mirror UNDP's move towards the Multi Dimensional PovertyIndex (MPI) and provide the government a more comprehensive understanding of incidence of deprivation in the country and a more reliable basis for targeting  Nonetheless, the proof of the pudding is in eating and one must wait for more details to emerge before hailing this move. As it is, the SECC process has been plagued by widespread criticisms of its methodology.