The Hindu : Revised methodology for BPL census

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Feb 02, 2003

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National

Revised methodology for BPL census

By Our Special Correspondent

New Delhi Feb. 1. The Union Rural Development Ministry has advised all the States and the Union Territories to initiate a Below Poverty the Line (BPL) population census, 2002 for the 10th Plan during the current financial year.

This is part of the Ministry's exercise at the beginning of each five-year plan to identify persons living below the poverty line for targeting them under the Ministry's programme. The last BPL census was conducted in 1997.

In view of the criticism of the methodology adopted for the census conducted in 1992 and 1997, the Ministry had constituted an expert group comprising administrators, academicians, planners and representatives of the States of Assam, Kerala, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.

On the basis of its recommendation, the Ministry revised the methodology, taking into account 13 scorable socio-economic parameters including operational holding of land, housing, clothing, food, security, sanitation, ownership of consumer durables, literacy, labour force, means of livelihood, status of children, type of indebtedness, migration, and the nature of assistance preferred. Each household will be ranked according to the total score obtained for classification into `poor' and `non-poor'.

One of the important features is that it does not require the direct application of the poverty line to identify the poor.

Nor will any household be excluded just because they possess some consumer durables as was done in the last census.

The new methodology would enable the ranking of each household in a village on the poverty scale so that others know inter se position of each household at the time of finalisation of the list.

The State Governments have been advised to identify the BPL households such that the number of BPL persons identified through the BPL census, 2002 may not exceed the number of persons living below the poverty line estimated by the Planning Commission for 1999-2000 for the rural sector or the number of persons as per the Adjusted Share computed by the Planning Commission, whichever is higher.

The estimation of the number and proportion of the poor is done by the Planning Commission based on the Quinquennial Consumer Expenditure Surveys conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).

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