BPL survey: NAC agrees to Plan panel methodology

This methodology is based on three-pronged strategy of automatic exclusion of well-off households; automatic inclusion of vulnerable households; and ranking of households based on seven different deprivation index for remaining households to filter them for the cap fixed by the Plan panel.

The NAC summoned Rural Development Secretary B K Sinha on Wednesday to brief them about the Cabinets decision regarding the BPL family survey along with caste census later this year.

During the presentation,NAC members including the UPA chairperson,were learnt to have expressed their anxiety over the inclusion of SC/STs and bonded labour in the BPL list. Sinha was learnt to have cited the findings of the pilot survey conducted across 254 villages across the country to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.

Sinha was learnt to have apprised that the pilot survey results had indicated that the proposed methodology would exclude merely about 16 per cent of the SC/ST households from the BPL list based on the automatic exclusion criteria.

In contrast,a BPL cut-off of two in the seven criteria-based ranking methodology would bring over 66 per cent of the SC/STs into the BPL list. Given that the Cabinet has approved being SC/ST as one of the deprivations,this means that one more deprivation for any SC/ST household is likely to bring 66 per cent of SC/STs under the list.