For efficiency,MP district brands its poor

The branding said Yeh parivar garib hai in blue letters on a white background and Yeh parivar ati garib hai in yellow letters on white,corresponding with the blue cards issued to BPL families,and yellow cards issued to the poorest of the poor eligible for the Antodaya Anna Yojana.

According to the administration,the colour-coding was meant to ensure that the benefits of pro-poor schemes went only to those for whom they were meant and it had hoped

that being branded poor would shame the rich into giving up their claim on resources not meant for them.

We get 20-25 new applications for inclusion in the BPL category every day. We wrote the slogans only on big houses or those owning tractors to embarrass the holders in the hope that they would apply for deleting their names from the list of the poor, Narsinghpur SDM Manoj Kumar Thakur told The Indian Expess.

The wall-writing was done as a last resort,Thakur said after all attempts to embarrass ineligible beneficiaries failed to get results.

The BSP,however,saw the step differently,and following a hue and cry over what the party described as public humiliation of the poor,the district administration began to clean up the walls on Monday.

MLA Sunil Jaiswal of the Congress agreed it is true that most BPL cards are not a true reflection of the holders status,and those who should be listed are out,and the rich have been included.

He alleged,however,that the administration had not been discerning or sensitive while writing on peoples walls one way of marking out the genuine beneficiaries,he suggested,was to display lists of blue and yellow cardholders at every gram panchayat office.

SDM Thakur,however,said the local administration had,in the past,made attempts to read out names of beneficiaries in Gram Sabha meetings,without success. Few bothered to hear the entire list, Thakur said. The exercise did not result in the deletion of even one name from the list.

Besides foodgrains and kerosene supplied through PDS shops at highly subsidized rates,BPL cardholders are eligible for free medical facilities in government hospitals.

According to the calculation of the central government,Madhya Pradeshs foodgrains quota is for 41 lakh BPL families,whereas the state governments list has over 61 lakh families. As a result,instead of 35 kg,each BPL cardholder in the state gets only 20 kg of grain.

Food and Civil Supplies Commissioner Ajit Kesari said the governments idea was to ensure that only the poor benefit from schemes meant for them,and districts had been told to display the BPL list on every PDS shop. What was done in Narsinghpur was an extension of the idea, he said.

He did not elaborate on whether the government approved of actually writing on peoples walls.