There was a target of around 50 houses to be allotted under one of the state housing schemes in my block, and it is the discretion of the BDO to select the beneficiaries/families, of course adhering to the criteria provided under the scheme. The only problem is that the possible eligible families would be at least 20,000. ‘Eligible’ may not be the right word to use probably. These families are extremely poor irrespective of whether they have BPL cards or not, lives under semi-broken thatched houses, with many children less than 3 yrs having no clothes on them!
It is impossible in practical terms to directly ‘select’ some fifty out of these families and so conventionally, BDOs depend only on the applications they receive to allot houses. But, the annoying part of the story is that, from 20,000 ‘eligible’ families, we do not receive even 50 applications!
The applications are received mostly from those families who know how to showcase themselves as utterly poor. Some of them even may have availed a house under some other scheme few years back. For the sake of a house, now a family of a widow mother and three sons would now divide and pretend as four different families, really asking questions on the ‘strong’ family system that our country is so proud of!
One another application was received on wife’s name and when we went on inquiry to her village and asked for her house, a person, someone who generally does not do anything and sits in the community centre all day playing cards or just sitting idle watching the on going vehicles, said he do not know who she is. After asking some more people, we found that she is the wife of the same person we came across first! Women’s names, especially wife’s names are not even remembered here!
Again, most of the applications are received from villages which are having good roads both within the village as well as connectivity to other places. This shows how much important it is to connect all the villages through roads, physical infrastructure. Villages with no roads are sort of, out of touch with the govt. and its schemes. They either do not have any confidence something can happen to their lives or they are really too far from the nearest grassroots govt. institution.
Those who can approach the office are having high chances of getting a house. Those whom I (or other officials) visit still have a decent chance. And the rest of the people are, for most purposes, left out. Not so lucky, if I can say so. At the end of the day, it all feels so wrong to me. I can try and ensure the allocations are not done to the wrong applicants, but I think I can never ensure the allocations to the ‘right’ ones. There are just too many of them.
The idea of writing this post is to encourage discussion on ideas how to go about such problems, and to question our beliefs. Generally, the family, as a system is highly regarded and the govt. as a system is not much. My experience with this scheme provoked me to question these two beliefs.
WorthvieW
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Nice Work Nikhil . You are actually putting in efforts which would be in the best interest of the country as a whole ! You will surely bring a wave of good change . We all are with you.
The local govt. bodies that we established should perform. Sarpanches and samiti members are the best resources in ensuring people know about the schemes. Also the ground govt. staff like the VLW/EO/GRS/RI etc are even more important.
Entitlements are to be of a different kind. Yes we need to provide food for their hunger problems. It is never a single process that will solve the problems. But we only have a single process, to give food.
The suggestion you made for school going families is good, but as u know, it depends on the implementation. We have MDM scheme which works decently fine with its own troubles. If we can implement a fail proof structure, it might work.
Sir, It is great to know that you have a good team at your disposal and people with knowledge about schemes.
Yes, entitlements aren’t beneficial in long term and imparting skills will definitely make them ‘earn’ their food and live with dignity. But until then how else can we make sure that the population doesn’t suffer from hunger?
Can we implement food security on the lines of Bolsa familia where the ration is provided strictly to those families whose children are enrolled in school and regularly vaccinated? For every R1$ spent, the govt. could get back R1.72$ and more importantly reduced the poverty in great numbers.
The general ideas of giving ‘subsidies’ or reservations is not the right approach, especially economically. Entitlements cannot ensure long term prosperity. What we need is capacity building. We need to train them to be economically stable.
At least in my block, people do know about schemes, I mean the entitlement schemes. There is no missing information in that regard. My block people know of NREGA, know of pension and housing schemes etc. They didn’t know about a training program, and as u said, the local body staff helped them in knowing it, and they responded in huge numbers.
Yes, procedure is still a tough ask for the villagers. We need a IT based solution to reduce procedures. Someone should help.
Ethical and moral education is more imparted indirectly through the society we live in, than in a classroom. Change thyself.
It is disheartening to see the sorry state of affairs in villages and probably the reason we can’t implement reservations based on economic background is this menace of impostors.
Sir, i read that local bodies can play a great role in transforming villages, atleast theoretically. As a BDO can you work through them and make sure the people know about these schemes. How about resorting to techniques like danDora, screening of public schemes at street corners,etc.
I think many of the villagers find it hard to get to terms with the ‘procedure’ followed. Seldom they’re helped by offices in completing the task especially by those who are point-of-contact with people. Shouldn’t they be more sensitive?
I’ve friends who are well off financially and yet they produced fake certificates to get fee reimbursement in college. when i asked them about this, what they said was, if i’m not taking advantage of the loopholes some other will; when the politicians are swindling away crores of rupees, what big deal if i have my fee covered.
What we need is ethical and moral education where people can think of society at large and not just their own personal benefits at others cost.
What i also realised is that, the lowest level of staff also do not have a bigger picture of why they do something (say, nrega works or selecting someone for training). All they know (or worry) is to reach targets and ensure their salaries are obtained without break. They have to be encouraged and trained, and if they can become efficient, they would be the best people to filter the greedy.
Nice one.. It covers, how we fail to communicate to the needy and how greedy people become needy.
i wish we could also do similar tricks .
yes, as u mentioned policy formation is still very far. direct cash transfer whether works or not, we need to find out ‘whom’ to give. identification of beneficiaries is a critical problem. aadhar came n went away , but the situation remains the same.
n, thanks for the encouragement.
U mentioned mix of things, can u elaborate if possible please?
identifying beneficiaries gets exceedingly tough only because new couples register as separate suddenly and just before a scheme etc. it is a big deal.
Passiveness of administration is a big problem, there are direct solutions except to have real good people coming in.
Government schemes do have a sociological impact. When TPDS in many states promise to provide 35kg of grains per FAMILY. This prompted many newly wed couples to register as a separate household. This became even more prevalent when NREGA promised 100 days work to each household. Its just a loophole, but its no big deal. 35 Kg grains and 100 days work is no largess.
More serious issue is passiveness of the administration. Beneficiaries must be identified proactively. There are so many schemes, that even the CSE aspirants dont know all of them. Isnt it a bit harsh on those hapless citizens, to keep track of these schemes?
remember a tenaliram story – some good eatable stuff, but v small in quantity, made its way to KDR, and he wanted to distribute it to the darabaris .. but how to divide it among so many courtiers .. Tenalirama made him dissolve that thing in water, and then they let every darbari have a spoonful .. 🙂 – something whose closest equivalent seems “direct cash transfer scheme” (though it too would have its negatives, and for that matter, tenalirama’s method too might have had).
But since the blog author perhaps did not have a say in the policy formation – the above is irrelevant .. What is not, and is v heartening to see, is that there exist such civil servants too – who genuinely feel to do the right thing, and even if one of those houses ended up reaching those who deserved them (because of you) – it is a huge huge deal …
Thanks
Man its all babus, only few babus like you can do wonders ….