Socio Economic and Caste Census could leave rightful claimants out of BPL list

Activists point out several drawbacks in the inclusion and deprivation criteria

Many poor in the rural areas are at the risk of being excluded from the food security net if the results of the ongoing Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC-2011) are implemented.

Take the example of Uddi Gujjar, a widow in her late 30’s. She lost her husband 10 years ago and lives with her two sons, Hanuman (16) and Prithviraj (15), in Tikel Purohitaan village of Jaipur district in Rajasthan. She has around 1.35 hectare of rain-fed farmland.

She has been a beneficiary of BPL all these years and gets 25 kg per month of cereals at Rs 2 kg from the ration shop. But now she could be dropped out from the BPL list under the SECC.

SECC deprivation criteria

The Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) is supposed to rank households on a scale of 0 to 7. A household’s score is simply the number of deprivation it has from the following

Households with only one room, kuccha walls and kuccha roof
No adult member between the ages of 16 to 59
Women headed households with no adult male member between 16 and 59
Households with disabled member and no able bodied adult member
SC/ST households
Households with no literate adult above 25 years
Landless households depriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour