In India, identifying deprived households has historically been a challenging task since everyone wants to be classified as poor to become eligible for State assistance. But poverty is relative, so identification requires verifiable indicators of deprivation and a participatory community process under the gram sabha to confirm the actual status of a person.
The Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011 (SECC) – which was thrust into prominence in recent weeks due to moves for another economic and caste census by Bihar – created, for the first time, a village/ward–wise list of deprived households that is caste-, creed- and religion-neutral, using the Census 2011 data of listed households. Nearly 90 million households in rural areas reported some form of deprivation, which meant they were eligible for automatic inclusion in the ultra-poor category.
The urban SECC 2011 was a far more difficult exercise than the rural one due to the absence of adequate staff for enumeration, frequent migration of the populace, the lack of formal community institutions such as the gram sabha at the habitation level, and the prevalence of illegal colonies and slums where people did not have formal identity certificates of residence.
The first cut in SECC 2011 was exclusion. If a person had three pucca rooms, a motorised vehicle, or a government job, she would be excluded. Of the nearly 180 million rural households, 39.37% were excluded; 1.6 million were automatically included because they were ultra–poor (for example, families of ex-bonded labour, manual scavengers, and marginalised tribal households). Of the remaining households, about 88 million (one in two) reported one or more than one deprivation. The Scheduled Caste-Scheduled Tribe (SC-ST) households were 38.5 million, about 43% of the total deprived households.
When you use deprivation as the basis for State benefits, the coverage of these vulnerable communities in poorer regions is much more than their numerical strength. The adoption of SECC 2011 deprivation criteria for programmes such as the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana Gramin, Ujjwala Yojana, Saubhagya, Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana, Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, the Deen Dayal Antyodaya Yojana and the National Rural Livelihood Mission led to the creation of the pro-poor public welfare thrust on deprived households.
It can be argued that this laid the foundation for the creation of a labharthi varg (constituency of beneficiaries) that emerged due to the government’s pro-poor public welfare thrust. The use of SECC 2011 led to government programmes reaching households that were missed in the sarpanch-centric preparation of BPL lists. SECC 2011 showed how adopting evidence-based, easily verifiable data for programme benefits to the deprived created an electorally significant constituency of the deprived. This deepening of the welfare programme was not only good economics, it was good politics as well, for all parties.
SECC showed a way. Can it be updated nationally again? It will not be easy since people now know that benefits flow from it. To tackle this issue, the government must develop a family-wise social registry of the deprived so that no one is left behind. Developing such a registry will require repeated validation, procedural transparency and public information through a participatory identification of the poor at the panchayat/gram sabha/urban basti levels. There must also be strong community organisations and a strong local grievance redress mechanism.
Technology cannot be a substitute for community involvement. Many pucca house owners try their best to get included (as seen in West Bengal), even though the programme does not permit it. To overcome such problems, geo-tagging of the kuccha house and community validation must be done. In the rural housing programme, there were 40.3 million people who were in a jhopri – two kuccha rooms set up or even less. When the government did the gram sabha validation, the number came down to 25.3 million because some had constructed houses and some had given wrong information. Many gram sabhas also said that there are unlisted kaccha jhopris.
SECC 2011 was path-breaking in creating a constituency of the deprived. While updating it will be tough, it must be done. Many states such as Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka are trying to develop a family registry of the deprived. Objectively verifiable indicators create social solidarities among vulnerable households. A real-time social registry of the deprived is the way to leave no one behind.
Amarjeet Sinha is a retired civil servant
The views expressed are personal
