The ongoing Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), to be used for identifying the rural poor for extending food and other entitlements, will end up excluding vast sections of the vulnerable, including the disabled, say food rights activists.
A pilot survey in a Rajasthan village showed that 67 per cent of people would be left out of the below-poverty-line category or ‘priority' list after using the seven-point SECC ‘deprivation criteria', former National Advisory Council member and Right to Food (RTF) activist, Prof. Jean Dreze, told reporters.
At present, 21 families in this village are BPL. After the pilot survey, only three families qualified under the SECC norms, he said.
Ms Uddi Gujjar, a MNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee) worker from Tikel Purohitaan village, said she was a widow and living with two school-going sons aged 17 and 15. A BPL card holder, she has one
“I will lose my BPL status if the SECC deprivation criteria is applied because my kuccha home has a thin roof and my son is above 16 years old, ” she said.
The SECC ranks households on a scale of zero to seven on a list of seven deprivations — households with only one room, kuccha walls and roof, no adult member between ages 16 and 59, households headed by women with no adult male between 16 and 59, households with disabled and no able-bodied adult, scheduled caste or scheduled tribe (SC/ST) households, those with no literate adult above 25 years and landless households deriving a major part of income from manual labour.
But it is the 13-point ‘automatic exclusion' criteria that is arbitrary and may lead to enormous social tensions, said RTF activists.
For instance, there are many disabled poor who have got specialised cycles from the Government, or landless fishermen who have been forced to motorise their boats to compete with big trawlers or SC/ST families who have been given Government subsidy to install water pumps.
“All these people will be automatically excluded and pushed into further penury,” they said, and urged the Advisory Committee of the SECC to address the “flaws” and ensure greater participation of gram sabhas and panchayats in the verification process.
The activists are also reaching out to Members of Parliament of all political parties to prevent the National Food Security Bill being introduced in its present form. The Bill is slated to be tabled in the ongoing Parliament session.