What may make New Deal a raw one

That is where the good news stops for Prasad, and Chidambaram’s challenge begins. Only 10 families — including Prasad’s — got these cards. And, Prasad has never received the subsidised rations he was promised. He pays Rs 9 per kg of wheat against the Rs 4.65 he should have been paying, Rs 12 for rice instead of the promised Rs 6.10 and Rs 15 for kerosene against the Rs 9.03 on paper.

Open his BPL booklet and you will find the empty ration-column pages interspersed with descriptions of schemes and pictures — of free aid for pregnant women, support for the girl child, clean drinking water — and other Central Government-allocated schemes that have never reached the BPL families they were designed for.

Ask 69-year-old Savita Devi who, on paper at least, is entitled to a pension of Rs 100 a month that the BPL scheme offers for destitute persons above the age of 65. She applied for her BPL card six years back — the receipt has been carefully preserved — but has not heard from anyone since then. ‘‘For me, one hundred rupees is a lot of money,’’ she said.

Savita is a widow and she is not even aware of the fact that once the main breadwinner dies, his family is entitled to a compensation of Rs 10,000. She suffers from tuberculosis but gets no treatment. ‘‘I went to a government hospital once,’’ she says. ‘‘They said they could not help me.’’

And yet, access to healthcare for the poor was a point that the Finance Minister touched upon today. He said that only 11,408 BPL families had been covered under the Universal Health Insurance Scheme. He wanted to raise this number to 10 lakh and, as a start, he was lowering the premium even further. An individual would now pay just Rs 165 and a family of five would pay Rs 248 for the coverage. The trouble is that no one in this entire colony of poor people is even aware of the scheme.

Obtaining the BPL card is the first challenge. Many do manage to cross this hurdle — after all, the Delhi Government says it has issued 4.01 lakh such cards for families with an annual income of less than Rs 24,200 — but making the BPL card work for them is a bigger problem. The only advanatge that Prasad’s family has managed to squeeze is the primary school mid-day meal for his nine-year-old daughter Rima. ‘‘The dalia is bad and so is the sabzi,’’ she pipes up.

Meanwhile, the family of four that lives next-door to Savita possesses a BPL card. Under the National Maternity Benefit Scheme, Sumitra was entitled to Rs 500 nearly two months ago, before the delivery of her first two children. Unaware, she went to a local midwife.

Prasad, Savita, Sumitra… it would be easy to blame them for not knowing their rights. The scheme is complicated enough. The BPL cards are meant for subsidised rations while these families would have to register afresh to avail of health and education benefits. But Chidamabaram’s real challenge will be to educate the authorities, who often have no idea what the poor can claim.

The Delhi government health dispensary at Mangolpuri, which could have helped Sumitra or Savita, is deserted. Dr Sunil Bhatnagar, still at home, has not heard of these schemes for the poor. ‘‘No forms or instructions have been given to us,’’ he says over the phone. ‘‘I am as clueless as they are.’’