By Aditi Bhojnagarwala
On 27 February 2024, a plea against demolitions of commercial constructions in the Akbarnagar district of Lucknow was dismissed by the Allahabad High Court. The court reached the conclusion that the petitioners were not actually poor by relying on the Below Poverty Line (“BPL”) certificates or income tax return (“ITR”) certificates that were collected from the petitioners. This article primarily aims to critique the methodology adopted by the Allahabad High Court in determining the poverty status of the petitioners and highlight the various flaws in arriving at a conclusion through examination of their BPL certificates.
Background of the Case
A plea against the demolitions carried out by the Lucknow Development Authority (“LDA”) in the district of Akbarnagar on grounds of illegal construction over government land, was raised at the Allahabad High Court. It was heard by a division bench comprising of Justice Vivek Chaudhary and Justice Om Prakash Shukla. The LDA claimed that there had been both commercial as well as residential constructions in the Kukrali river bed, which posed as a hazard to clean drinking water facility for the entire city of Lucknow. Since the constructions were illegal, the LDA sought to demolish the same.
Methodology adopted by the High Court in determining actual poverty of petitioners
The High Court, during its deliberation on the petition pertaining to shops and commercial constructions, dismissed the plea on the basis that the surrounding circumstances of the case did not provide sufficient grounds for the court to exercise its discretionary jurisdiction in favor of the petitioners.[1] The court reached this decision by primarily categorizing the petitioners into two groups, the taxpayers and the BPL card holders. The court required the former to submit their ITR certificates and the latter to submit their BPL certificate with the court. On examining the aforementioned documents, it reached the conclusion that those who were presenting themselves as slum dwellers, were unable to provide accurate information to prove that they were poor.[2]
Challenge raised in the Supreme Court
This order on the demolition of commercial structures was challenged in the case of Vishnu Swaroop Chaurasia v State of Uttar Pradesh¸[3] and was presented before Justice Sanjeev Khanna and Justice Dipankar Datta of the Supreme Court. The court, after listening to the appeal, merely provided the petitioner with five days’ time to remove his belongings from the property, post which the structure would be demolished. Yet, in substance it upheld the decision of the Allahabad High Court and expressed no disapproval of the methodology adopted by the High Court in ascertaining the poverty of the slum dwellers.
Drawbacks of using BPL as a method for estimation of poverty
The last major update to the BPL method of estimating poverty was made by the Suresh Tendulkar Committee in 2011. The earlier food-based approach was expanded to include a larger basket of goods and services which included health, education, electricity and transport. The poverty line was then estimated based on the minimum consumption expenditure required to meet the most basic standard of these needs. It was set at Rs. 446.68 per capita per month for rural areas and at Rs. 578.80 per capita per month for urban areas, based on the 2004-2005 data. Officially, there have been no updates to the poverty line since 2011, which is Rs. 816 per month for rural and Rs. 1000 per month for urban areas.[4]
The consumption expenditure data collected by the National Survey Sample Office (“NSSO”) is used to calculate this threshold for the poverty line. However, the same has been criticized for being arbitrary and unrepresentative of the actual needs of the people living in poverty. This is due to reasons such as a comparatively small sample-size being used, the lack of frequency in data collection, outdated sampling,[5] rural bias in representation and non-comparability of questions across surveys.[6] Furthermore, with the NSSO survey being suppressed for 2017-18, the data that is currently being used is of the 2011-12 survey which is more than a decade old.[7]
The committee actually decreased the calorie intake requirement to 1800 kcal per day, stating that the same had been recommended by the Food and Agricultural Organization (“FAO”). However, this recommendation by the FAO minimum dietary energy requirement for light and sedentary activities. The same can obviously not be indicative of the needs of the majority of the Indian population that is engaged in strenuous physical labour.[8] The change in food consumption patterns have also not been taken into account in the recent years, thus making the very basis of calculation outdated.[9] Household spending has increased by 2.5 times in urban and 2.6 times in rural areas in the last decade. Moreover, there has been a decrease in the proportion of expenditure on food from 42.62% to 39% in urban, and from 52.90% to 46% in rural areas.[10]
Furthermore, the committee takes the median expenditure on facilities, like education, to be the threshold for adequate schooling. However, due to the high inequality in the country, this median is much lower than the mean expenditure on education. Moreover, the quality of education and the requirements of necessary supplements like stationary are not taken into consideration.[11] The debt that a family might have to incur for these purposes is also largely ignored. Hence, the methodology used in the calculation of the BPL line does not indicate the actual expenditure required to meet these basic needs.
An attempt was made by the Rangarajan Committee to be more reflective of the actual expenditure required for a decent standard of living, by linking international poverty measures to the Indian schemes.[12] Its methodology included the use of normative conception of nutrition as well as behavioral determination of non-food expenses. However, the recommendations of this committee were rejected and the methodology of the Tendulkar committee was retained for the purposed of calculation of the official poverty line, which is used till date.
There is also a high risk of inclusion and exclusion errors in the calculation of BPL, examples of which have been provided in the subsequent section. There can be errors of specification and gradation within the survey conducted for the purposes of investigating which households fall below the poverty line. Specification errors happen when variables in the survey are mis-specified, under-specified or are vague, and thus lead to uncertainty in the classification of a household. Additionally, gradation errors happen since a higher score in the questionnaire may not always be indicative of lower levels of poverty. There have also been multiple instances where no actual survey was done and numbers were simply manipulated afterwards.[13]
Furthermore, the scores of 13 parameters are aggregated into one single measure of poverty, thus presenting an inaccurate picture of which particular facility is lacked by which household, and inhibiting any real scope of change. Additionally, the cut-off scores that are pre-determined for each state, also results in the exclusion of a large number of families who would otherwise fall within the BPL category.[14]
Proof of certification as an incorrect criteria to determine BPL status
A joint study was conducted by researchers at Jawaharlal Nehru University and All India Institute for Medical Sciences Delhi to examine the effect of the out-of-pocket medical expenditure of the people on their socioeconomic status.[15] Out of a sample size of 374 patients, it was revealed that 15% of them, according to their income, lied in the BPL category. However, only 45.2% of those who lied in the BPL category, were aware of the existence of a BPL card. Additionally, 69% of the people in the BPL category did not have a BPL card, whereas 5.5% of those who lied above poverty line (“APL”) has a BPL card. This is not only indicative of the inclusion and exclusion problems in the methodology of ascertaining the BPL status, but also of the lack of awareness of the program among the target group.
Another study by Ram et al, which used the NFHS-3 data, indicated that 60% of the Indian population living in abject poverty did not have a BPL card.[16] The NSSO survey also revealed the high rate of inclusion and exclusion errors that are present in the distribution of BPL cards. These errors are due to reasons such as the centre setting up ‘caps’ on the number of poor people a state was ‘allowed’ to have. If the actual number of poor people exceeded this cap, they were excluded from the BPL list until a vacancy was created.[17]
The errors in identification are also often influenced by political relations and difference in power equations. A study by Besley et al revealed that politicians in the villages of South India are more likely to have BPL cards than non-politicians, although the former are usually the comparatively wealthier section in the village who otherwise would be ineligible to avail the BPL benefits.[18] Consequently, this results in the vulnerable and powerless poor households being deprived of the benefits of having a BPL card.[19] Furthermore, a study by Swaminathan revealed that even among the poor, the socially backward classes such as the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are least likely to have a BPL card.[20] This shows that excessive reliance on a BPL certificate as the sole indicator of poverty could result in the exclusion of the most marginalized and vulnerable communities. Hence, a mere certification of BPL is not truly indicative of whether a household is actually poor or not.[21]
Alternative strategy that should be embraced
There was a difference in the methodology adopted by the court when ascertaining the poverty of the residents with respect to the residential and commercial structures, with BPL certification as an indication of poverty was only used for the latter. Although a more humane approach was taken by the court when dealing with residential structures, where the court itself admitted that the BPL categorization might leave out some who were actually poor,[22] the same rationale was not extended to the commercial structures. This could partly be due to the fact that ‘housing’ is considered as a basic necessity whereas a shop is not.
While dealing with residential properties, the court made no distinction between those having BPL and ITR certificates. Instead, the court acknowledged that since the petitioners were in fact living in a slum, they may not be in a financial condition to sustain themselves. Hence, the court permitted all the residents of the Akbarnagar colony, irrespective of the certificates they held, to take benefit of the alternative accommodation scheme available for the people belonging to the Economically Weaker Section. Furthermore, the requirements of cash deposit and payment installments under the scheme were further relaxed for them.
An alternative and more reliable approach for ascertaining poverty status with respect to commercial settlements would be the Capabilities Approach that is advocated by Amartya Sen.[23] In the Capabilities Approach, poverty is perceived in the terms of deprivation of certain basic capabilities instead of looking at it merely from the perspectives of income and consumption. Instead of listing down a certain number of capabilities that must be considered as basic, Sen instead advocates for an approach where evaluation of poverty is done through the lack of a person’s capability to live a life that they have reason to value.[24]
The Supreme Court, in the landmark case of Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation,[25] recognized the right to livelihood to be an integral component of the fundamental right to life enshrined under Article 21. Furthermore, as was evident in the pleas of the petitioners, they too considered their shops to be their sole source of livelihood and thus an integral component of a life that they have reason to value. Thus, an adoption of the Capabilities Approach would have rightfully forced the court to question the LDA, and in turn the government, as to why the petitioners were deprived of the basic capability of advancing their livelihood, since the same was their fundamental right.
Conclusion
The court had originally adopted the approach whereby the absence of a BPL card was taken to mean that the person did not in fact fall below the poverty line and was hence not poor. However, the determination of poverty through BPL certification is flawed both in theory as well as in practice. The methodology of determining the BPL line and classifying people according to the same, has itself become archaic and obsolete. Additionally, the multiple errors of exclusion and inclusion, alongside the difficulties in accessibility, make BPL certification an inadequate criteria to determine the existence of poverty.
Thus, instead of relying on BPL cards, the court should adopt the Capabilities Approach as proposed by Amartya Sen. By evaluating poverty through the lens of a person’s capability to achieve that functioning that he deems integral to live a valuable life, the court would have reached the conclusion that by depriving the petitioners of their basic means of livelihood and the opportunity of sustenance through the means of small commercial settlements like shops, the government was impoverishing the slum-dwellers of Akbarnagar.
The author, Aditi Bhojnagarwala, is an undergraduate law student at the NALSAR University of Law, Hyderabad.
[1] Petition Filed In Supreme Court Challenging Demolition Drive In Lucknow’s Akbar Nagar, Live Law, available at https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/petition-supreme-court-demolition-drive-akbar-nagar-lucknow-250738?infinitescroll=1, last seen on 02/03/2024.
[2] Lucknow Akbar Nagar Demolitions: Supreme Court Stops LDA From Demolishing Houses Till HC Verdict, Says Many Are Poor, Live Law, available at https://www.livelaw.in/top-stories/supreme-court-lucknow-development-authority-akbar-nagar-demolitions-250856?infinitescroll=1, last seen on 02/03/2024.
[3] V.S. Chaurasia v. State of Uttar Pradesh & Ors., Special Leave Petition (Civil) No. 9433 of 2024 (Supreme Court, 29/02/2024).
[4] N. Iqbal, How many people live below the poverty line in India? It could be 34 million or 373 million, Scroll, available at https://scroll.in/article/1048475/how-many-people-live-below-the-poverty-line-in-india-it-could-be-34-million-or-373-million, last seen on 05/03/2024.
[5] S. Ravi, Our national surveys are based on faulty sampling, The Indian Express (07/07/2023), available at https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/shamika-ravi-writes-our-national-surveys-are-based-on-faulty-sampling-8799300/, last seen on 07/04/2024.
[6] B. Debroy, The Janus of India’s official statistics, The New Indian Express (17/06/2023), available at https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/2023/Jun/16/the-janus-of-indias-official-statistics-2585706.html, last seen on 07/04/2024.
[7] J. Drèze & A. Somanchi, Recent Poverty Estimates Are Little More Than a Shot in the Dark, The Wire, available at https://thewire.in/rights/india-poverty-estimates-shot-in-dark, last seen on 05/03/2024.
[8] M. Swaminathan, A methodology deeply flawed, The Hindu (05/02/2010), available at https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/A-methodology-deeply-flawed/article16812528.ece, last seen on 06/03/2024.
[9] J. Ghosh, India’s official poverty line doesn’t measure up, The Guardian (04/10/2011), available at https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/oct/04/india-measuring-poverty-line, last seen on 05/03/2024.
[10] S. Sarda, Food for thought: What the new consumption pattern can mean for inflation, The Economic Times (28/02/2024), available at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators/food-for-thought-what-the-new-consumption-pattern-can-mean-for-inflation/articleshow/108079572.cms?from=mdr, last seen on 07/04/2024.
[11] N. Iqbal, Earning 8 Times The Poverty Line But Still Poor: What Official Poverty Statistics Miss, India Spend (04/04/2022), available at https://www.indiaspend.com/poverty/earning-8-times-the-poverty-line-but-still-poor-what-official-poverty-statistics-miss-811182#:~:text=The%20line%20is%20fixed%20at,per%20month%20in%20urban%20areas., last seen on 06/03/2024.
[12] Planning Commission, Rangarajan Report on Poverty, available at https://pib.gov.in/newsite/printrelease.aspx?relid=108291, last seen on 07/03/2024.
[13] V.K. Ramachandrany and U. Sarkar, Lessons from BPL Censuses, The Hindu (20/04/2010), available at https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/Lessons-from-BPL-Censuses/article16371331.ece, last seen on 06/03/2024.
[14] S. Rukmini, Whole Numbers and Half Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India, 138 (1st ed., 2021).
[15] V. Bajpai , N. Singh , H. Sardana , S. Kumari , B. Vettiyil & A. Saraya, Errors of inclusion and exclusion in income-based provisioning of public healthcare: Problems associated with below poverty line cards, 30 The National Medical Journal of India 348, 349 (2017), available at https://nmji.in/errors-of-inclusion-and-exclusion-in-income-based-provisioning-of-public-healthcare-problems-associated-with-below-poverty-line-cards/, last seen on 07/03/2024.
[16] F. Ram, S.K. Mohanty & U. Ram, Understanding the Distribution of BPL Cards: All-India and Selected States, 44 Economic and Political Weekly 66, 69 (2009), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/40278510?seq=1, last seen on 07/03/2024.
[17] Rukmini, supra note 14.
[18] Timothy Besley, Rohini Pande & Vijayendra Rao, Just Rewards? Local Politics and Public Resource Allocation in South India, 26 World Bank Economic Review 191, 216 (2012), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/41679558, last seen on 07/04/2024.
[19] I. Hirway, Identification of BPL Households for Poverty Alleviation Programmes, 38 Economic and Political Weekly 4803, 4805 (2003), available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/4414254?seq=1, last seen on 08/03/2024.
[20] M. Swaminathan, Public Distribution System and Social Exclusion, The Hindu (07/03/2008), available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265075823_Public_distribution_system_and_social_exclusion, last seen on 08/03/2024.
[21] M. Mahamallik & G.B. Sahu, Identification of the Poor: Errors of Exclusion and Inclusion, 46 Economic and Political Weekly 71, 73 (2011), available at http://environmentportal.in/files/poor.pdf, last seen on 07/03/2024.
[22] Raju Sahu & Ors. v. State of U.P. Thru. Prin. Secy. Deptt. Urban Employment And Poverty Alleviation Program Lko & Ors., W.P. (C.) 1372 of 2024 (Allahabad High Court, 06/03/2024).
[23] A. Sen, Development as Freedom, 87 (1st edition, 2000).
[24] T. Wells, Sen’s Capability Approach, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, available at https://iep.utm.edu/sen-cap/, last seen on 07/04/2024.
[25] Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation, 1985 SCC (3) 545.