Rural households having a member earning more than Rs 10,000 a month or anyone serving in a government or government-aided organisation or owning a landline phone will not be included in the below poverty line (BPL) category in the new poverty census being conducted by states.
However, the new census, which also includes questions about religion and castes, will compulsory include rural households without shelter, destitutes living on alms, manual scavengers, primitive tribal groups and legally released bonded labourers as BPL.
According to guidelines laid down by the union rural development ministry, the BPL list in villages will not include households who hold at least one kisan credit cards with a limit of Rs 50,000 or above, or have motorised fishing boats of any make (two/three or four wheelers), or those who have registered their enterprise with the government.
Households paying income tax or professional tax, or those who have three or more rooms with pucca walls, or have 2.5 acre or more irrigated land or five acres of land irrigated for two or more crop season will also not form part of BPL census, which will be concluded by December.
The remaining households, based on exclusion criteria and a compulsory inclusion list, will be assigned scores based on the deprivation indicator that they satisfy.
The deprivation indicators include households with only one room with kuccha walls or kuccha roof, those with no adult members between 16 and 59 years of age, female-only households with no adult member, those with no able-bodied adult member or disabled member, SC and ST households, landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour and those who don’t have literate adult above 25 years of age.
A deprivation score based on the indicators would be derived for each households which will vary from 0 to 7.
“For the purpose of coverage under welfare schemes, households eligible for compulsory inclusion will have the highest priority, followed by those who have higher deprivation scores,” the guidelines said.
It also said the deprivation cut-off should be set in a manner so that the total percentage of poor households should be less than or equal to the cut-off poverty ratio as prescribed by the Planning Commission.
The guidelines lay down that the census will be on a self-declaration mode, meaning the enumerator will not force the household members to declare any information.
If he finds that the information provided by the household is not correct, he can put in his dissent note for the same separately in the enumeration form. This time, the BPL census also assumes significance as caste and religion have been included.
On caste and religion, the guidelines categorically state that this information will not be made public, but will be used only for socio-economic profiling of various castes.
On the operational front, the model enumerator form sent by the rural development ministry to all states and union territories has a new section on religion.
On castes, different codes are assigned for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, others and members who do not belong to any particular caste or tribe. The column on caste has an explanatory note which says scheduled castes can only be among Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists, while scheduled tribes can be from any religion.
