Biased questionnaire for BPL listing

Darjeeling: Cold weather has driven out hundreds of people in the hills from the BPL category.
The give-away was the number of warm clothes.

The government logic is that since people in the hills have more clothes (most have more than six) than their counterparts in the plains, they are surely better off.

The information on clothes was one of the questions that determined a person’s status as a BPL .
Unlike the late 90s when a separate survey was conducted to identity BPL people, the state government this time used the findings of a social and economic study conducted in 2005-06 to draw up the list. This, however, is not the reason why 40,951 people from the eight blocks of the hills, who were previously on the BPL list, were elevated to the APL category.

“The fault lies in the government policy. The questionnaire should be different for different areas because the psyche is not the same,” said a bureaucrat.

On the other hand, in the Darjeeling plains, 11,693 more people have been included in the list from four blocks .

The GNLF has demanded a fresh survey.

“While 40,000 of our people have been excluded from the BPL list, the number of poor people from the plains have gone up. We want a new study,” said Deepak Gurung, president, Darjeeling Branch Committee.

Pranay Rai, the GNLF MLA from Darjeeling, has questioned the logic of the survey premise. “People in the hills will definitely have more clothes as the weather is cold. What kind of questionnaire is this?”

GNLF leaders alleged that most of the 12 questions that were used to prepare the BPL list go against the hill people.

The party maintains that the psyche of people here was not considered while drawing up the questionnaire. “In the plains most farmers prefer to buy 12 buffaloes instead of a pucca house. But the questions have been so framed that possessing cattle is not considered to be a mark of APL. But people from the hills, to whom the pucca house is a priority because of the topography, lost out on the BPL status because of this question,” said Rai.

Subash Ghisingh’s party also said migration could not be used as a factor to determine financial status as most of the hill people work in tea gardens and don’t need to go elsewhere for jobs. “But this does not mean that they are well off,” said Gurung.

GNLF leaders want the government to frame a questionnaire that echoes the sentiments of people here, who perhaps earn the same as their plains counterparts, but have a differently priority when it comes to expenditure.

Rajesh Pandey, the district magistrate of Darjeeling, admitted that about 40,000 people who were previously included in the BPL list have been de-listed by the recent survey. “If the political parties convey their grievances in writing, we will definitely sent it to the government,” he said.

Source: The Telegraph