Income alone should not be criteria to fix BPL: experts

Chennai:

Income alone should not be the lone criteria and the government should include social vulnerability, gender, access to basic amenities like clean water and good environment as indicators of poverty, according to experts.



Slamming the UPA government for coming out with figures like spending more than Rs 32 per day and Rs 26 per day in urban and rural areas respectively doesn’t entitle anyone to come under the government’s social security of below poverty line, Supreme Court advisor on Food Security V Suresh alleged it is a calculated move by the United Progressive Alliance government to deny the reality of poverty in India and come out with artificial figures.



“They tried the same thing three months ago by fixing Rs 15 per day in rural areas and Rs 20 per day in urban areas as the poverty line. Now they have repeated it. It is a cruel joke and robs the poor of dignity and is violation of directive principles,” he said.



Ossie Fernandes, Director, The Human Rights Advocacy and Research Foundation (HRF) and Balasundar of Citizen Rights Forum said that Income is not lone a criteria to determine poverty.



“The government should include social vulnerability, gender, access to basic amenities like clean water and good environment as indicators of poverty,” they conclude.



Suresh says that the government is slowly trying to do away with the social security scheme by dismantling public distribution system and giving cash credit which is an agenda of World Bank.



He said the figures arrived by planning commission is “fit enough for pigs to live.”



“The Suresh Tendulkar Committee report has identified 38 per cent of the population as poor, The current figures by planning commission underestimates M C Saxena report and Arjun Sen Gupta report which the UPA government never wants to acknowledge. This is a cruel joke by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and deputy chairman of planning commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia,” he said.



“Such measures will reduce the young population, which is the asset of the country to be stunted and wasted besides blowing a big hole in the economy by spending on medical bills,” Suresh added