A third of Bihar's 29.7 mn families survive for less than Rs 200 a day

Nitish says Bill soon to increase quota to 65%

More than a third, or 34.13 per cent, of the 29.7 million families in Bihar live in poverty, surviving on a daily income of Rs 200 or less, according to a detailed report of the caste survey the Bihar government tabled in the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday.

The Bihar government released the first part of its caste survey, conducted earlier this year, on October 2, which enumerated the state’s population at 130 million, comprising 27.12 per cent Other Backward Classes (OBCs), 36.01 per cent Extremely Backward Classes (EBCs), 19.65 per cent Scheduled Castes (SCs), 1.68 per cent Scheduled Tribes (STs), and 15.52 per cent General category, including upper-caste Hindus and Muslims.

On Tuesday, the second day of the five-day Assembly session, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said his government would bring in a Bill in the current session to increase the extent of caste-based quotas in the state. He said the state government would increase the quota to 65 per cent from the current 50 per cent.

Kumar said his government planned to provide an assistance of Rs 2 lakh each to the 9.4 million poor families who live on less than Rs 6,000 a month for taking up some form of economically productive work. He said the government also planned to give Rs 1 lakh to each family identified as homeless, and reiterated the demand that the Centre give Bihar special category status.

“We have estimated that the state will have to bear an additional burden of Rs 2.51 lakh crore (Rs 2.51 trillion) to improve the lot of the poor,” he said.

According to the report, the incidence of poverty is worse among the state’s SCs, at 42.78 per cent, and STs, at 42.91 per cent. They have to make do with Rs 200 or less daily.

Among the SCs, poverty among the Musahars was 54.56 per cent, Doms 53.1 per cent, and Nats 49.06 per cent.

Among the STs, Santhals were the poorest at 52.09 per cent.

The survey said poverty among OBCs and EBCs was nearly the same at 33 per cent. In the ‘General’ category, Hindu and Muslim upper castes, it was 25 per cent. The report found that the literacy rate had risen from 69.8 per cent (2011 Census) to 79.8 per cent in the state.

The caste survey’s poverty estimates are similar to the NITI Aayog’s multidimensional poverty index, released in July this year. The NITI Aayog index stated that the proportion of Bihar’s multidimensional poor reduced from 51.89 per cent in 2015-16 to 33.76 per cent in 2019-21, a drop of 18.13 percentage points, the sharpest in India. Its analysis, which compared the National Family Health Survey-4 (2015-16) and NFHS-5 (2019-21), found that 22.5 million people escaped multidimensional poverty in Bihar in the last five years but clarified that the estimates might not fully assess the pandemic’s effect on poverty as more than 70 per cent of the NFHS-5 data was collected before the outbreak of the disease.

The state has also improved its sex ratio from 918 to 953 women per 1,000 men. The report said more than 5 million people of Bihar lived outside the state in search of livelihood or better education opportunities, including 217,000 living abroad. Those pursuing studies in other states numbered about half a million.

According to the data, of the 25 per cent poor among the upper castes, poverty was high for Bhumihars (27.58 per cent) while lowest among the numerically minuscule Kayasthas (13.83 per cent). Among the OBCs, more than 35 per cent of the Yadavs live on less than Rs 6,000 a month, while among the Kurmis, the caste to which Nitish Kumar belongs, nearly 30 per cent of the people earn a similar amount.

The report found that 6.68 per cent of the Kayasthas had government jobs, while the number was 3.6 per cent for the Brahmins, 4.99 per cent for the Bhumihars, 3.81 per cent for the Rajputs, 3.11 per cent for the Kurmis and 1.55 per cent for the Yadavs. It stated only 0.13 per cent of the families owned a tractor, 0.44 per cent a four-wheeler, and 3.8 per cent a two-wheeler. The report said that Bihar had 7 per cent graduates, 9.19 per cent who had studied up to higher secondary (class 11 or 12), 14.71 per cent had studied up to classes 9 or 10, 14.71 per cent had attended secondary school and 22.67 per cent had attended primary school (classes 1 to 5).