Improbable but not Impossible

More than a quarter of Indians currently are below poverty line. If India is on track with MDG for reduction of extreme poverty by half in the future then we can expect to have 20% Indians below poverty line when the poverty is halved. Our measures to link health insurance, Public Distribution System, Janani Suraksha Yojana and National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to the Below Poverty Line card can raise the rate of reduction of poverty only if we can manage to get every Indian who is not able to earn Rs.32 in a day to own a BPL card. So, improving the system of providing BPL cards and removing corruption from the process can accelerate the rate of reduction faster than what the world bank anticipates.

Fragmentation of communities due to the rural push and the urban pull leaves migrant laborers extremely vulnerable to exploitation. We need to ensure that the services they were able to access in their native place should be available to them in the new workplace too. Therefore, identity in the form of voter card alone beats the whole purpose of continuity of access to services. The new identification system by a smart card will address the problem meaningfully only if the availability of BPL card, RSBY card and the ration card is made easy.

In order to get information and help with paperwork, there should be one office that should give them information and help them finish their paperwork without having to relinquish their wage for the day. Transportation is another facility that should be available for them to readily feel inclined to reach such an office and fulfill their paperwork. It would help if the employee is given official leave to get all this done without losing his wage. It should be the employers responsibility to inform them about what papers have to be produced and how and where the office is located.

Accommodations given on rent should have a licensing system, so that sub-human standards of living may not be tolerated. Most of the migrant labourers in Ludhiana live in single rooms with a toilet shared with 10 other people living in other single rooms. The cleanliness and hygiene of the place and the toilet is deplorable. Such accommodations as well as squatter huts should be banned from being rented. There should be a separate complex of government built accommodations which should be given with subsidized rent. After all , these are the people who are taking forward the city of Ludhiana in its economic growth, they must not be treated as ghosts who have no value.  

The beggar above poverty line

I pass by this young, crippled beggar boy almost everyday and I know that he gets more than rupees 32 a day. That doesn't make him any better than those who don't, because he sits in the sun all day, begs with cries for mercy and eats little. He has no capacity within himself to access the Public Distribution System. So even if he has Rupees 32 in his lap, he cannot be considered above poverty line. Poverty like his, eats into the very soul of a person. We need a serious rethink on the methodology of measurement of poverty in our country.

Looking at this boy's condition, I am inclined to believe the survey that was published in the news about Mumbai beggars who were found to be above poverty line. We need to reassess whether the poverty line basket that we have decided to follow is enough to indicate the ground realities.

I would still appreciate the government for taking the courage to revisit the issue of poverty line, it being a scary topic to talk about for any government. I also appreciate the government for being transparent about the methodology used for this.

This debate over the poverty line may have, in the beginning, made the government sound ridiculous, but in the larger picture we have an administration that dares to visit a tough issue and tries to do its best. 

The positive side

Even though the poverty line cut-off seems outrageous, the world bank believes that India is on track with the millennium development goal of extreme poverty reduction by half by 2015.

Whose Right Whose Responsibility

Administrative authorities were sensitive enough to pronounce right to information as a basic human right of every Indian citizen. In spite of this, the vulnerable remain unaware of the benefits the government has set apart for them. This gap between pronouncing information as a right and seeing a difference in people's lives as a result of information must be filled by holding someone responsible for making that information reach these people. Can NGOs do this? or should a special department be set up for monitoring coverage of information and reporting lapses with legal consequences. This would require investment. Or should the employer be held responsible for divulging all the information that the employee must know, the benefits, the rules and regulations, the nature of partnership between the government, employer and employee to provide the benefits that the government intends to provide. 

This was in context with the Employees State Insurance Scheme which is a partnership between the government, the employer and the employee to provide healthcare insurance. In the survey that I am involved with, I have realized that people are not allowed to ask questions about the extent of sharing that should happen between the three stakeholders. If they try, their job is indirectly at risk. This survey is being done among migrant laborers who are mostly factory laborers. 

Our debate on poverty-line seems to be meaningless if we do not take into consideration the factors responsible for the failure of benefits reaching a large section of the poor as defined by the previous cut-off for Poverty Line. 

The Cloud of Unknowing

The busy life of poor laborers makes it impossible for them to get any information about protecting their health or living a less costly life. They neither have time nor information about how to get the various welfare benefits for which they are eligible and which can make their life a little better.

Its ironic that in this age of information and technology, the poor just cannot access the much needed information. Even so, the authorities do not provide information in a localized manner so that residents of a particular town or city can know exactly what the government offers to different sections of the society.  It is believed that referral is the weakest link in our primary healthcare system. Now that transport facility has been provided, no one knows that it even exists.

The government services have lost so much credibility that now, even though the government offers money for institutional delivery, the people still have better confidence in private doctors if they have money or in untrained or trained birth attendants if they can't afford private doctor. Those who opt for private doctors, end up in small clinics run by 'doctors' of dubious credentials.

If government can find funds for running meaningful information projects with support of social workers to liaison between people and the government authorities, a whole lot o f non-utilization problem might be solved. Many migrant dwellers do not know where the government hospital is, even if they know they cannot spend on transport frequently enough to access out patient services of the distant government hospital.

Apart from providing ambulances in the city, there should be some reliable, comfortable, cheap transport facility available for these invisible people who cannot move around because of the cost and time involved.

Hospitals run by ESI (Employees State Insurance) have a poor reputation in terms of quality of services. Even then, people who have been registered with ESI have nothing much to say about these services, since this is the best they think they can get.

I have come across no one so far in this survey, who would say that he earned a salary more than Rs. 6000.  So, it can be reasonably concluded that this invisible population of migrant slum dwellers is entirely below poverty line. They do not have the resources to network with each other and form registered society or social groups that cannot be ignored by the employers or the city authorities, when something unjust happens to them. They hardly know each other enough to tell each other's whereabouts, duration of stay in the city or any other information about their fellow migrants. The idea of self-help groups seems to be wrought with difficulties since they don't socialize with each other.

Individualized lifestyle of an urban place hits them in such a way that they get imprisoned in their own cell of work, eat and sleep. It looks like, socializing is also a luxury available for the upper economic classes. 

out of the box

    We as a community in India need to look at a better way of channeling services equitably to everyone. Poverty line seems to be a concept that attempts to provide some minimum service to the poorest. Maybe we should consider the system of providing essential services to the community without looking at their poverty status. Like, it is essential that everyone eat enough food to get the right amount of energy. Are we sure that people above poverty line are eating enough food? We assumed that by virtue of being poor people don't eat enough food. But it is also true that those who aren't getting enough energy for the day may be working too hard without optimum amount of breaks so that even though the person is earning to put average amount of food on his table, his energy requirement is far greater and the problem is not in the amount of food then, the problem is in his work- duration at a stretch.  So, even though he seems to be above poverty line from an income point of view, there are non-economic factors in his life that make him live a compromised life.
     Does it sound too expensive? Impossible? Vague?
     Let collective thinking begin.

Information

     People are ridiculing the Planning Commission's decision to set the 'poverty line' at Rs. 985 for urban and Rs. 751 for rural people.  So much so that people have demanded the methodology of calculation to be disclosed.

     For two reasons the Planning Commission should systematically disclose the method of coming to that cut-off ;

1. People have a right to information. Those deserving poor who are going to get left out from the welfare benefits because of this cut-off will have a direct grievance to be addressed by the government. 
2. The planners need to convey the constraints which compelled them to take such a decision. Such information published in the public domain will have supportive as well as critical comments. The point being that a process of collective thinking will bring us the advantage of many more of the ideas that could be implemented to come to a just and fair agreement. 

This may look like a Utopian way of solving the problem, but it is worth a try for the sake of those suffering the brunt of severe disparity in a fast growing economy run largely by the rich minority.
     

Information without literacy

      Earlier I used to think, when a certain critical number of Indians will become literate, we would then begin to see changes in people's lives. But overtime, having observed and worked among different communities I have realized that literacy is not a necessary element for empowerment. Information plays a bigger role and literacy is one way people can acquire information. Information seems to be at the core of a person realizing what he is worth, what he has a right to ask for, what he has a right to claim and what he should not tolerate. It follows then, that spreading information through means that do not require a community to be literate can lead to holding the authorities accountable for rendering justice to their responsibilities.

      For example, there is an ambulance service called '108' available for the residents of the city Ludhiana in the state of Punjab, India. When I inquired from the migrant slum dwellers whether they knew about it, the answer was mostly no. Those who did seem to be aware of the ambulance, did not know that it was meant for everyone and that it could be called anytime anywhere to take a patient to the hospital of the choice of the patient. If this information alone is made truly universal among the city residents including the squatter hut dwellers who migrate from other states and districts, it would lead to a reduction in death rate and morbidity rate to a certain extent. It would inculcate a sense of security among the residents of the city.
      Trying to achieve the same thing by improving the literacy rate would be a long route with a significant loss of life and health by the time we get there.

      People are busy therefore it is difficult to get their attention, also an incorrect argument. When people are told that we are from a major hospital in the city and that we had come to ask them how far they get health services, people made time up to one hour inspite of their busy engagements and sat down and answered our questions patiently. They expressed hopelessness in the system, in its capacity to provide services that are meant to be free.

       Therefore, information should be pursued seriously as an important tool to empower them towards the goal of making services more meaningfully accessible to them.  

Rupees 32 for a day

Even though the people living in jhuggis are paying large sums to survive, this must not be viewed as hidden or undisclosed riches that remains hidden because of dishonesty. These people are paying large sums to survive out of very small denominators whereas the rich who are also paying heavily are paying out of very large denominator. Therefore, the vulnerability index of the jhuggi residents shoots out of the graph while the vulnerability of the rich is nearly non-existent. The poor are vulnerable in many other respects for example in terms of information. They are so poorly informed about the services they should be receiving that they don't even think it is possible that such services be provided to them and that it is their right to ask for them. In a survey that I have been involved with, the poor, when asked, what facilities they would like the government health system to provide, they have no idea if it is possible at all to receive free medicines, subsidized treatment or health worker visits at their doorsteps.

Even to rent a jhuggi costs Rs. 800 per month. How can one survive with 32 a day?

suffering - odd or even

Is suffering evenly distributed between the poor and the rich? Why do we only think of serving the poor? 


Since I am from India, the previous post was about the Below Poverty Line (BPL) Certificate in India that ensures some free services to the poor.

BPL card

If social benefits are going to be linked to the BPL card then many deserving people will not get the benefits the government announces.