Lessons from BPL Censuses

Lessons from BPL Censuses

V. K. Ramachandran, Y. Usami and Biplab Sarkar

To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well.

The pilot surveys for the next Census of BPL (below-poverty-line) households are due to begin. Discussions are now on to finalise the methodology for the survey, and as the BPL Census is a matter of the subsistence and survival of hundreds of millions of India's households, it is important that we draw lessons from the experience of past BPL Censuses.

Poverty alleviation programmes in India can be categorised into universal programmes (or programmes whose beneficiaries are self-selected), and targeted programmes (or programmes that are exclusively for predetermined target groups). An example of the former is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for participation in which any “rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled marginal work” qualifies. Most anti-poverty programmes, however, are targeted programmes. The Public Distribution System (PDS) for the provision of fair-priced food, and the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), India's major rural housing scheme, are examples of targeted programmes.

The criterion for targeting is, most often, whether or not a household is below the poverty line. Identifying BPL households as on the ground is thus crucial to the implementation of targeted anti-poverty schemes. Indeed, the XI Plan Working Group on Poverty Elimination Programmes has written that the “best course in future would be to rely increasingly on the aggregation of BPL Survey data for the policy decisions at the state and central level and for monitoring the progress of poverty elimination.”

Since 1992, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has conducted three BPL Censuses in rural areas.

The BPL Survey of 1992 used an income criterion to determine poverty, and the annual income cut-off was fixed at Rs. 11,000 per household. The BPL Census of 1997 was conducted in two stages. First, some families were excluded on the basis of certain criteria. In the second stage, each remaining household was interviewed to determine its total consumer expenditure, and was identified as a BPL household if its per capita consumer expenditure was below the poverty line set by the Planning Commission.

Unlike the previous BPL Censuses, the BPL Census 2002 used a “score-based ranking.” Each household questionnaire had two parts. Section A recorded some introductory characteristics of households. These were the “non-scoring parameters,” which did not figure in the final assessment of the household's poverty status. Section B, which recorded 13 “scoring parameters,” was intended to evaluate the quality of life of the households. A score (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4) was assigned for each parameter. The aggregate score of the thirteen parameters for each household was calculated and the absolute and relative position of each household in a village in respect of its poverty status was set.

The BPL Census 2002 has been widely criticised by the rural poor and their organisations, and by scholars. Even the expert group set up by the MoRD to advise it on the methodology for the next BPL Census said that, although the number of parameters needed to measure poverty had gone up from one in the 1992 survey to thirteen in 2002, the errors of exclusion and inclusion remained above acceptable limits. Targeting errors involved exclusion errors, which exclude poor households from the category of the poor, and inclusion errors, which include non-poor households in the category of the poor.

We recently conducted a study of the reliability of the BPL Census of 2002, comparing household-level data from the MoRD website for four villages (one each in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh) with village-level socio-economic data collected by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies in the same villages.

There were four types of causes for exclusion and inclusion errors in BPL household identification. First, there are errors involved in the survey, i.e., in the questionnaire and in the investigation process. The selection of indicators and the scoring scheme for each parameter have rightly been criticised for their inconsistency. There were two major types of problems with respect to the stipulation of scoring parameters. The first set of problems relates to specification. With regard to many variables there are problems of mis-specification, under-specification, or vagueness, allowing for no certainty in how a household is to be classified. The second set of problems relates to gradation. It is not always true that a higher score in the questionnaire represents lower poverty in practice. For instance, with respect to the indebtedness parameter. although a household that has a few paltry household assets and no debts could be one that is in fact too poor to be considered creditworthy by even an informal-sector lender, such a household receives a score of 4, which is higher than the score assigned to, say, a rich landlord who borrows only from commercial banks.

Secondly, there was data-cooking or manipulation after the survey. Even the expert group wrote that “in actual practice no detailed survey was done and survey sheets were filled up within the office itself.”

Thirdly, one of the most serious flaws in the methodology of BPL household identification was in the aggregation of scores of 13 parameters to establish the absolute and relative position of each household with respect to poverty status in a village.

Lastly, another serious cause for exclusion errors is the way cut-off scores were set for each State, district and village. According to the MoRD guidelines, the State-level cut-off was set at the level of the official Planning Commission poverty line plus 10 per cent as an allowance for including the “transient poor” in the BPL category. The determination of the cut-off for administrative divisions within the State (district, block, and village, for example) was left to State governments. As a consequence, the aggregate cut-off score for the determination of BPL households could vary across those administrative entities. In our study, in one State the cut-off varied even from village to village in the same block.

Two main methods of conducting the fourth BPL Census are now under discussion. The first, suggested by the Expert Committee chaired by N. C. Saxena, proposes a method that will identify those who will automatically be excluded, “ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable sections are automatically included,” and grade the rest to identify the poorest among them. The second proposes that identification be broadly on the basis of exclusion and inclusion.

Past experience teaches us important lessons. First, any system of score-based ranking to identify the rural poor is inevitably — in theory and practice — arbitrary, unfair, and inequitable. Secondly, poverty is multi-dimensional, that is, people can be poor with respect to some or all of a range of criteria — for instance, with respect to income, hunger, health, schooling and education, housing, access to the means of sanitary living, and so on. Why then should a single classification of poverty — whether based on criteria set by the MoRD or the Planning Commission or a combination of the two — be considered adequate to measure whether a person is income-poor, nutrition-poor, education-poor, housing-poor, and so on? The natural beneficiaries of a scheme that provides housing should be the population without adequate, safe and clean housing, just as the natural target group for a scheme to provide sanitary toilets is those who have no access to such facilities. Why should access to such schemes be determined by arbitrary reference to fictitious BPL categories? And why should State governments be forced to fit welfare policies to the Procrustean bed of the MoRD's current BPL measure?

In India today, BPL and APL (above poverty line) are not used merely as analytical categories, but as categories that determine inclusion in and — more important — exclusion from anti-poverty programmes. The basic welfare of households and their access to facilities that should be basic rights — food, education, health, and sanitation, for example — is made or broken by the system of BPL-APL segregation in our administrative system. To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well.

( V. K. Ramachandran is a Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Yoshifumi Usami is a researcher at the University of Tokyo, and B. Sarkar is a Research Assistant at the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.)

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Distress cattle sale rampant in Jhabua

Distress cattle sale rampant in Jhabua
Mahim Pratap Singh
Drought, increased reliance on cash crops and lack of fodder are the primary reasons

Jhabua (M.P.): A combination of drought, increased reliance on technology-intensive cash crops and lack of fodder has resulted in Jhabua farmers selling off their cattle, most of which are smuggled to Gujarat, according to sources.
The weekly cattle haat in Raipuriya block reveals a disturbing pattern of cattle sale that is actually a self-perpetuating vicious cycle involving changing agricultural practices.
These haats have been a common part of rural life in Jhabua. However, the reasons for selling cattle have changed from being primarily exchange or upgrade-based in the past to being distress-based now.
Extensive use of herbicides in this region has resulted in a steep decline in fodder cultivation alongside the main crop. This, coupled with a shift to non-fodder cash crops such as tomato and chilli, means there is nothing to feed the cattle with.
The only option is to sell them. And since most of them are largely malnourished, they fetch less than encouraging prices in the market.
Also, the current crop trends in the region require the farmers to hire tractors and threshers, often forcing them to sell off their bulls and other cattle. This means they lose out on a crucial livestock product — cow dung — which is used both as cooking fuel and organic manure.
As a result, farmers have to grow cotton (especially MCH-1) in the lean January-February season as cotton stems serve as cooking fuel to make up for the shortage of cow dung. This has further resulted in an increased BT cotton cultivation in the area.
Also, a shift to chemical fertilizers becomes inevitable since there is no organic manure.
Asked why they were selling off cattle, all except one cited maintenance reasons. “What do we feed them with, there is no fodder. The common grazing land has been encroached upon and they are growing strange plants on it,” said Likhmi, a woman selling goats.
S.K. Dhuriya, Assistant Veterinary Doctor, Petlawad, agrees that there has been a decline in cattle population, but disagrees with distress being the cause.
“There has been a decline primarily because of the use of grazing lands for agriculture,” he says. “Also, people have fewer but better cattle now than before.”
The village commons, used for community cattle grazing, has increasingly been taken up by the State government for growing Jatropha, the much-hyped “bio-diesel” plant. Rows of Jatropha plants can be seen dotting grazing lands and “protected” forest lands.
At the same time, while the number of cattle has declined, meat production in Madhya Pradesh has increased consistently, from 10,200 tonnes in 2001-02 to 23,300 tonnes in 2008-09, according to data from the MP economic survey.
Dalaals flourish
The distress cattle sale in the region has spelled good business for a lot of middlemen, called dalaals.
When approached, these dalaals offered any number of any cattle for sale secretly. “People are ready to sell, but since the markets are down, nobody is willing to pay a good price. If you are willing to pay up, I can get you any number of buffaloes,” said a dalaal.
“Some of them are also sent to Delhi. But we have to be very careful, as VHP men are constantly on the lookout for us,” he said.
Sources said that while some of the cattle are bought off within the village, most of them are smuggled to slaughterhouses across the border to Gujarat.
The district police, however, are reticent in admitting this.
“I don’t believe there is any organised illegal cattle trade in this region, but there have been some incidents and we have intercepted vehicles carrying animals to Gujarat from time to time,” says Abhay Singh, Jhabua SP.

Jhabua on its way to becoming Vidarbha-II?

Jhabua on its way to becoming Vidarbha-II?

Mahim Pratap Singh

If it does not rain over the next week, farmers of Petlawad tehsil and its neighbouring regions in Jhabua might have to go the same way as their brethren in Vidarbha did.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan recently declared Jhabua, along with 36 other districts, drought-hit.
The agricultural apparatus in Jhabua is choking under the same processes that led to the ‘Vidarbha catastrophe.’
These include a shift from pulses, coarse grain and oilseed dominated organic and semi-organic farming to a high-input cash cropping system, a vicious debt-cycle with a simultaneous decline in cattle population and an agricultural landscape dotted with BT cotton crop.
Add to this, “a good drought” looming large and the result will mean small and marginal farmers running short of options in the event of a crop failure.
Failure of BT cotton crop
“Like most other farmers, I opted for BT-1 and BT-2, the latter I still grow,” says Mangal, a farmer from Thikariya village, “The companies promised a 25 quintals output. I managed 3 quintals. Others had much less. It didn’t even cover the production costs.”
By the time the farmers learnt that all was not hunky dory with this much advertised “white gold,” they were knee-deep in debt, as almost the entire agricultural production process in this region runs on non-institutional credit.
The only option they had, in order to pay their debts, was to move to other water-intensive cash crops such as tomato, chilli and soyabean along with BT-2. However, by this time, the region, like the rest of the State, was reeling under water and power crises. When the BT revolution practically failed and some farmers decided to question the multi-national corporations that sold it, they were offered bribes and issued threats.
“Officials from a major multi-national seed firm [Monsanto] came to my house and offered me a bike, and then Rs.70,000 to keep quiet,” says Ranchhod Laal, a farmer from Timariya village.
The debt process
Seeds, pesticides and chemical fertilizers are usually provided by local shopkeepers on credit through middlemen who have mushroomed in these times of agricultural crisis.
“Ninety nine per cent of our transactions are on credit,” says Mukesh Chaudhary, owner of a pesticide shop. “Sales have increased since 1999. People buy more fertilizers to get a larger produce from their small land holdings,” he adds.
Farmers in Jhabua use about 600 kg of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and other related products per hectare of land. Chaudhary puts this figure even higher, at 700-800 kg.
These products, however, come with a rider. They are provided at 200 to 300 per cent higher prices than the original cost, and at a compound interest of around 24 - 48 per cent annually, by either the shopkeeper or the local moneylender.
The estimated percentage of non-institutional debt is over 60 per cent of the total debt. Next, come loans from acquaintances, followed by cooperative societies and banks. The much celebrated Self Help Groups make up for the smallest percentage of loans availed by villagers in Jhabua.
So, when the State government waived a Rs. 60-crore loan taken by farmers here under an ill-designed and unsuccessful lift irrigation scheme, it hardly offered any respite, it was only 35 - 40 per cent of the debt the farmers were reeling under.
In Lalaroondi, where the combined annual income of all families of the village is Rs.5,02,997, the combined annual debt stands at Rs.16,07,200. For Kaajbi, these figures are Rs.13,93,234 and Rs.63,29,558 respectively. There are similar figures for other villages of the district. Per capita debt, at Rs.35,000 approximately, is the highest in Semlaapaara village.
‘Arrey, they are poor farmers’
Government officials, however, totally negate the living experiences of the farmers.
“No no, what are you talking about?” asks Sunil Dube, DDA, Jhabua district. “Farmers still grow traditional crops like urad. They do not have money to buy chemical fertilizers and cash crop seeds,” he contends.
But do they buy these on credit? Dube does not think so. “ Arrey, they are poor farmers. Who will give them credit? They are not even creditworthy,” he says with conviction.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government, in its Assembly election manifesto, dedicated an entire page promising to make Madhya Pradesh an “organic state.” Almost a year later, these promises have translated merely into half-hearted training programmes.
“When the government promoted GM farming and chemical pesticides, did it reduce its efforts to training programs only?” asks Nilesh Desai, a local activist leading the fight against the proliferation of GM farming. “Government officials still keep visiting local farmers, encouraging them to take to cash-cropping,” he says.

Put your money down, boys

Put your money down, boys
Ganjam migrants in Surat send home Rs. 400 crore a year, a fourth of that through the unique Tappawala courier system. But global recession has seen remittances take a hit, writes P Sainath.

15 August 2009 - He does not want to be named or photographed, nor have his village identified, though he speaks freely. His fraternity is crucial to the lives of nearly half a million migrants from Ganjam who work in Surat. He may have been an agricultural labourer or small farmer in his origins, but is now part of a tiny elite running an operation worth around Rs.100 crores a year in this single Orissa district. Meet the 'Tappawala,' Ganjam's parallel 'postman' or money courier.

How do migrants send money home to their families, and how much? "Our conservative estimate is that Ganjam's migrant labourers remit Rs.500 crores a year back to their villages" says Lokenath Misra of the NGO Aruna, whose "Sethu" project attempts to serve as a bridge between Ganjam migrants and their homes. "Of this, Rs.400 crores comes from Surat alone. A full picture is not possible, as the industry is illegal."

So what does a Tappawala do, anyway?

"I spend 15 days in Surat and 15 days here in this Ganjam village each month," says the Tappawala who has been in the trade for 20 years. "In Surat, I contact the 200-300 labourers I service and ask them if they would like to send money home. Each sends around Rs.2500 a month." This implies his handling between Rs.5 and 7.5 lakhs a month. But this is for nine months only, since the migrant to Surat normally spends three at home each year. So our Tappawala is handling between Rs.45 and 67.5 lakhs annually. "When in the village, I collect parcels for the migrants in Surat from their families. That includes hot pickles and other foodstuffs."

Does the returning Tappawala carry all that cash on him from Surat? "Not the whole distance. Typically, he would buy a bank draft with that in Surat on a branch in Berhampur (Ganjam's main town). He would cash that in Berhampur and reach the village by bus or jeep. So he'd really carry cash only for about three hours and 80-100 kilometres."

"There are about 100 Tappawalas," says the main one speaking to us. (Tappawalas in other villages confirm his figures.) "Of these 80 are minor to middling, like I was" He insists he is 'retired,' though the respect shown by those around him suggests otherwise. "In this league, you handle a maximum of Rs.7.5 lakhs a month." So 80 of them deal with between Rs.36 and 54 crores a year. "There are about 20-30 big Tappawalas. They move over Rs.10-15 lakhs a month each, some of them much more." Implying they handle anywhere between Rs.18 and 40 crores a year as a group, or "much more." Remittances "peak between May and October owing to wedding and festival seasons."

"But remittances have taken a big hit with the recession," he says, (using the word recession in English). "Our volumes are badly down." The collapse of the export sector in urban Gujarat has had hard-to-imagine ramifications in Orissa's villages. That collapse has seen nearly 50,000 of close to half a million (overwhelmingly male) migrants in Surat return to Ganjam.

Migrant remittances are the mainstay for Ganjam's roughly 3.5 million people. This has been a high-migration district from British times, particularly after the great famine of 1866. Ganjam labourers have been to myriad destinations, including Burma where some joined Netaji's Indian National Army during the freedom struggle. Three "Burma Streets" in Berhampore remind us of the link. Today, Ganjam migrants are all over India. A small group even works as plumbers in Ladakh. Nobody knows the total number of migrants from Ganjam, but they could number up to a million.

Lokenath Misra of Aruna says: "On average, Ganjam migrants from all places send in maybe Rs.10,000 a year each. We reckon all migrants making remittances send home at least Rs.500 crores a year to this district, totally. Of this, perhaps Rs.400 crores comes from Surat from where people send home much higher amounts. But even there, poorer ones who come home only once a year bring their savings with them and do not use the Tappawala."

Villagers in Ganjam explain how they send money home from Surat. However, the Tappawalas obviously stayed out of the photograph. (Picture by P Sainath).

Some big Tappawalas have prospered enough to be elected Corporators in Surat. Suggesting these individuals are handling much more than the annual average of Rs.1.35 crores for members of their league. "Our rates are normally Rs.30 per thousand," says our Tappawala, who earns around Rs.2.5 lakhs a year. "For that your money gets delivered within 8-15 days. 'Next-day delivery' charges are Rs.40 per thousand."

Next day delivery? How? "Oh, we now have networks of our relatives. Usually urgent transfers involve just a few thousand. So we ring up our relatives here who may withdraw it from the bank and give it to the family." Sometimes, he adds virtuously, "the man wanting to send money home may not have any ready, so we advance it ? interest free." But an interest rate of Rs.5 per hundred per month ? the standard rate of the local moneylender ? kicks in from the second month.

Technology helps. "Earlier, we'd have to physically meet all our contacts in Surat. Today, some one in that group would have a cellphone so enquiries are a lot quicker." Also, he reveals, "a few of us are using the Internet for money transfer." He's cagey about the details of this method but it is mostly about sending an email from Surat to a contact in Berhampur. (Probably an illegal moneylender.)

Why should people use him? Why not a bank or post office? "Several do use banks, but most of us have never had a bank account," point out those sitting around the Tappawala. And, he adds, "people feel intimidated in a bank." And the post office? "Even if you are literate, which most migrants are not, you cannot fill out your money order form in Surat in the Oriya language. Getting someone to write it in poor English risks having your money order going astray."

Orissa has recently seen a few postmasters making off with crores of rupees in savings and money orders entrusted to their care by mostly illiterate people. Migrants feel more secure with the Tappawala as his family usually lives in their village or in one nearby. "But we have a security problem," says one. "Once identified, there's a risk." Tappawalas have faced lethal attacks on that cash-carrying stretch from Berhampur to Ganjam's interior villages. Maybe that's why most of them insist they've "retired." They're silent about when they did so. But their money talks. ⊕

P Sainath
15 Aug 2009

Money talks, ... and walks

Money talks, ... and walks
B V Narasimham

March 2004 - Orissa has a long history of supplying substantial numbers of migrant workers to various parts of India, including the economically important pockets of Mumbai, Calcutta and Gujarat. Rough estimates put the figure of migrant Oriya labourers in Gujarat at about 800,000. Of this number, about 80 per cent work in the power loom and diamond polishing businesses in and around Surat. The remaining are spread across the state, working in various factories including plastics, textiles, salt manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, brick manufacturing, and fertilisers.

Orissa has been a source for such migration for more than a half century. Some important reasons are frequent cyclones and natural calamities in the state, a substantial reduction in the availability of forest produce, and the lack of employment opportunities, all resulting in heavy indebtedness amongst its peopl. To cope, the poor, mainly from the drought-affected parts of western Orissa, temporarily migrate to other districts and states – Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in Orissa, Raipur and Bilaspur in Chhatisgarh. They come back during the monsoons to plant the kharif crop, and later to harvest it. Migration is more permanent among people from places like Khurda, Nayagarh and Ganjam. These migrants are generally better off economically, with some education. They migrate to other states mainly in search of better employment opportunities, and not so much because of a vulnerability to drought or famine, like people in western Orissa. They migrate primarily to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

Among the many problems that migrant workers face, a crucial one is the limited scope to save their earnings, which are temporary in nature. When workers do not have any work, they have to return to their homes for money. In the villages, their dependents (wives or mothers) opt for conventional methods of saving when there is some money (purchasing land, jewellery and cash). They cannot address emergency situations. This creates further indebtedness and migration, and the vicious circle continues. Since there is no support system available, the bargaining power of the migrant workers is negligible and they are compelled to work at low wages. It has come out in discussions with migrant workers that most of them return permanently to their places of origin after ten or 15 years, without any savings, and their poverty persists generation after generation. Though at their place of work, workers may earn reasonable wages, they tend to squander their earnings due to the lack of avenues for saving.

The majority of migrant workers who send a part of their incomes to their families back home do it through money-orders of the Indian postal department. A very small proportion of workers send money through bank drafts, because people in villages normally do not have accounts with banks. Even if a migrant worker has a bank account and purchases a bank draft, once the draft reaches his family, it has to be encashed at a branch of the same bank in their village. In case the bank on which the draft is made does not have a branch in the village, the draft is useless. Thus, unless banks expand their operations to every corner of the country, a bank draft as an option for remittance to families has very limited scope.

The families of migrant workers face a number of problems in remitting money through the post office too. A time lag of 20 days between sending money and its receipt by their families back home is typical. Post offices charge a fee of Rs 50 for every Rs 1,000 sent. Sometimes the family in the village is not informed about the arrival of such money – they get to know of the remittance through letters from the migrant worker. The postal staff sometimes uses the money for money-lending activity and do not pay the families for a long time. One postmaster was transferred and sacked for this reason. In many cases, several visits have to be made to the post office to recover the money that rightfully belongs to the family. In a few cases, money orders are not delivered to the designated recipient.

Migrant workers sometimes send money through friends and relatives from their village, but this method is fraught with problems including robbery on the way and non-delivery of cash to families.

Adhikar, a non-government organisation working for more than a decade in parts of Orissa, has identified an opportunity to address, in a unique way, issues related to money remittance from Gandhidham in Gujarat. Adhikar implements a number of activities of micro-finance through women’s self-help groups, legal counselling to villagers, and livelihood generation and restoration. Adhikar staff visiting Gujarat in 2001 to undertake relief assistance for people affected by the devastating earthquake found about 10,000 Oriya people who had migrated and were working in various activities in and around Gandhidham – at the Kandla port, free-trade zone, IFFCO and for the Railways. Most of them were from Khurda district in Orissa where Adhikar operates. In the three blocks of Tangi, Khurda and Kanas in the district, more than 60 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Young members of more than 1,500 families of these blocks have migrated to Gujarat to earn their livelihood. During a brief survey, Adhikar found that among other things, a pressing need of the migrant workers is a safe and efficient way of remitting money to their family members, and an avenue to save part of their daily earnings which will be useful during lean periods.

To address the issue of remittances from Gandhidham, Adhikar came up with an initiative with support from the research and innovation fund of CARE India’s CASHE (Credit & Savings for Household Enterprises) project. The mandate of the CASHE project is to identify and promote innovative initiatives in micro-finance such as Adhikar's. The objectives are to establish an appropriate mechanism (safe, fast and cost-effective) for transferring migrant Oriya workers' funds to their places of origin, to provide micro-finance services (primarily savings) to migrant workers and their families back home, to provide the legal counselling whenever required to families of migrant workers, and to organise people in the proposed project area to benefit from government schemes.

Shramika Sahajoga was incorporated in August 2002 exclusively to look after remittance services for migrant workers. Shramika Sahajoga has its head office in Tangi in Orissa and a project office at Gandhidham. At both ends, bank accounts have been created in the name of Shramika Sahajoga in Corporation Bank. Through these accounts the money is transmitted from Gandhidham to Orissa. The most difficult part of the initiative is convincing workers at Gandhidham about the credibility of Shramika Sahajoga, especially in the initial stages. Mr Amin, the secretary of Adhikar, along with his staff conducted door-to-door meetings at Gandhidham, to build awareness about the initiative, its objectives and how it will help workers. The advantage Adhikar had was that Oriya workers in Gandhidham are from places where the organisation has had microfinance operations in place for quite some time. By cashing in on the goodwill of their Ma Bank (women’s bank), Adhikar won the confidence of Oriya workers.

Subsequently, workers have been registered as members of Shramika Sahajoga and money has been transmitted from Gandhidham to Orissa using a well-thought and assured plan. (See box "Money walks") Shramika Sahajoga mobilises family members of migrant workers to form self-help groups to provide micro-credit for small income generation activities. At the time of remitting the money to the family, with the family’s consent, Rs 100 is set aside by the organisation as savings of the family withShramika Sahajoga. Apart from that, there is an option of voluntary savings by the members. The savings thus mobilised from the members are used as a revolving loan fund for lending to needy members. Currently Shramika Sahajoga is mobilising savings only in the form of voluntary deductions in Orissa and will start lending once the groups are strengthened in terms of organising regular group meetings and understanding the basics of savings and lending. In Gandhidham, the organisation offers recurring deposit and voluntary savings products to the members.

So far, progress on the initiative has been encouraging. The membership has grown from a mere 13 at inception in September 2002 to 280 at the end of December 2003. Cumulatively, Rs 1,650,000 has been remitted, with an average remittance of Rs 3,400 per remittance per member. The growth in membership, and thereby remittance, has been very steep in the last four months, as a result of the demonstration effect. There is scope to expand the service to other pockets of Gujarat, especially Surat, where a large number of Oriya migrants from Ganjam district live. Shramika Sahajoga with seven staff members (two in Gandhidham and five in Orissa) will break even by February 2005 if it continues its current performance, coupled with lending operations in Orissa.

In the long run, a number of benefits are expected from the project:

• Smooth, safe and cost-effective transfer of money of migrant workers to their families back home.
• Establishment of a viable micro-finance institution for the families of migrant workers of Orissa.
• Family members of migrant workers will undertake income-generating activities.
• Economic development of migrant workers and their families as a result of savings promotion among them.
• The associated improved understanding of families of migrant workers of various social and economic issues.

If this model of remittance succeeds, money transfer will attract the imagination of many development agencies that aim to serve migrant workers in a meaningful way. It must be noted, however, that remittance alone will not be sufficient for an initiative to be effective in the long run. It must be supplemented by other micro-finance services like savings and credit, and most important, insurance for workers. In collaboration with mainstream insurance companies, Shramika Sahajoga offers insurance free of charge to about 35 members.

The choice of areas for remittance service is important. As in the case of Shramika Sahajoga, it is desirable to choose places where people from a pocket or a couple of pockets have migrated. It would otherwise become an unwieldy service, both at the source and destination of migration. The choice of the category of migrant workers to be covered under money transfer services is crucial because the average remittance per member per remittance is critical for the organisation providing these services to recover its costs. ⊕

B V Narasimham
March 2004

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২২শে নভেম্বর, ২০০৮— ডেটলাইন কী হবে, তা নিয়ে মহা ধন্দ।

গোয়ালিয়র থেকে শিবপুরী যাওয়ার পিচঢালা রাস্তা। বাঁদিকের জানলাজুড়ে যত দূর দৃষ্টি চলে, শুধুই রুক্ষতার বড়োসড়ো বিজ্ঞাপন, শুধুই এবড়ো-খেবড়ো। ডাইনে তবু খানিক সবুজ, কাছে-দুরের পাহাড় তুলোট কাগজে ওয়াসের ছবির মতো ঝাপসা।

সেপথের ধারেই তাঁবু পড়েছে ওঁদের। গাড়ি থামতেই মহিলার দল আড়াল-তফাত। ‘বলতে চাই না, চাই না’— করেও অনেক কথা বলে ফেললেন অমর সিং, হেমরাজরা। ঘরছাড়া মানুষের এই দলটায়

১৩জন ‘জেন্টস’ আর তেরো জন ‘লেডিজ’। বাচ্চা-কাচ্চার সংখ্যা জানতে গিয়ে অবশ্য হিমসিম খেলো। তিন মরদ মিলে জনে জনে জিজ্ঞাসা করে জানিয়ে দিলেন— ষোলো।

বৃত্তান্ত সেই একই। এরা ঘর ছেড়েছেন আহ্লাদে নয়, অভাবের তাড়নায়। এসেছেন সেই রায়সেন জেলা থেকে। গ্রামের নাম কুন্ডরী। দেওয়ালি মিটতেই আশপাশের গোটা তল্লাটের গাঁ-ঘরের বেশিটাই খালি। কেউ এসেছেন পরিবারজুড়ে, কেউ বা একাই। আসতে পারেননি বয়স্করা। পাঠিয়ে দিয়েছেন ছেলেপিলেদের, এমনকি যুবতী মেয়েদেরও। কোনো কোনো মহিলা অবশ্য গ্রামেই থেকে গিয়েছেন, গরু-ছাগল দেখার জন্য।

আসলে কী আর করবেন। চাষ করে যা আয় হয়, তাতে কুলোয় না। সেচের জল বলে কোনো কালে কিছুই ছিল না ভিল আদিবাসীদের ঐ জমিতে। বৃষ্টি হলে চাষ, না হলেই সর্বনাশ। খেতে যা ফসল হয়, তাতে তিন-চার মাসের বেশি চলে না।

তাই সোয়াবিন তুলেই সোম সিংরা নেমে পড়েছিলেন ‘সর্দার’-র খোঁজে। তবে খুঁজতে হয় না বেশি। গ্রামের ধারেকাছেই তাকেন এই সর্দাররা। তাঁরাই সব সুলুক-সন্ধান দেন। কোথায় গেলে কাজ মিলবে, কত মজুরি পাওয়া যাবে— এই সব। এরাই ট্রেনে চাপিয়ে দলকে দল মানুষকে নিয়ে যান কাজের খোঁজে। বদলে সর্দার পান মজুরির একটা অংশ। তেমন খোঁজ পেয়েই এখানে ওঁরা এসেছেন এক বেসরকারী টেলিকম কোম্পানির লাইন ফেলার কাজে।

কত টাকা নিয়ে ফিরতে পারবেন? মুখ চাওয়া-চাওয়ি শুরু করলেন অমর, সোমসিংরা। বোঝা গেলো সবটাই আন্দাজে ঢিল ছোঁড়া। একট গভীরে বোঝার তাগিদে জানা গেলো, ‘দেখুন এক মিটার গর্ত করে বোঝাই করা পর্যন্ত শেষ করলে ৫০টাকা পাওয়া যায়। ছেলেরা গর্ত খোঁড়ে, মেয়েরা মাটি সরায়। গোটা দিন কাজ করলে দু’জনে মিলে একশো টাকা হয়ে যায়।’

ঘুরতে ঘুরতে ভোপাল হয়ে পৌঁছে যাওয়া গেলো রায়সেন জেলায় অমর সিংদের গ্রামে। বাড়িতে ওর বৃদ্ধ বাবা-মা, আর দেখভালে অমরের ন’বছরের মেয়ে। গোটা গ্রাম খাঁ খাঁ করছে। তবু তার মধ্যেই চোঙা ফুঁকে চলেছে ভোটওয়ালা অটো রিকসা, ভোটের হাওয়া তুলতে। কিন্তু ভোটের প্রচারের কথা শুনতে হাজির নেই এ তল্লাটের বহু গ্রামের মানুষ। পেটের দায়ে তাঁরা অন্যত্র পাড়ি দিয়েছেন। ভোটের আগে ফিরেও আসবেন না।

প্রশ্ন ছিল হেমরাজকে, ভোটে ফিরবেন না গ্রামে? বললেন, ফিরতে হলে তো যা কামিয়েছি গোটাটাই চলে যাবে।

তাহলে এই বাছা বাছা প্রতিশ্রুতির কী হবে? বি জে পি যে সেদিন কোন্ডরায় বলছিল, ‘সরকার তোমাদের জন্য কতকিছু করছে, আরো অনেক কিছু করবে।’ আর কংগ্রেস বলছে, ‘তোমাদের জন্য ওরা কিছুই করলো না। আমাদের ভোট দাও, আমরা করবো।’

কিন্তু ঘরছাড়া মানুষ জানেন, ভোটপর্ব মিটলেই এদের টিকি মিলবে না। আবার সেই রুটি-ভাতের তাগিদে অন্য গ্রামে, অন্য জেলায়, কখনও অন্য রাজ্যে পাড়ি। হেমরাজের প্রশ্ন, ‘আদিবাসী কা কৌন শৌচতা হ্যায়।’

Orissa's labour industry

Orissa's labour industry
A conniving chain of regulators, police, and contractors is profiteering upon the backs of gruelling labour by migrants. Jaideep Hardikar reports on the exploitation.

June 2004 - Dashrath Suna is a very busy man these days. His two-storied house stands out amid the cramped huts of Katabanji, a small town in Bolangir, Orissa. From a poor migrant of the 80s, Suna amazingly grew richer, and richer, in the past decade or so. Having grasped the tricks of the ugly labour market while once toiling hard to excruciating physical limits, he now trades himself in western Orissa's biggest industry - labour.

Oddly, in this no-industrial belt, known for poverty and deprivation, migration of people is a big business, which runs into crores of rupees. People like Dashrath Suna make a lot of money from it, while poor migrants run into greater depths of despair every year. The more the number of migrants, more is the money earned by these agents. Suna knows what he does is blatantly illegal and inhuman, but in this business, even otherwise, no laws apply.

Picture: An old woman grapples for two square meals in a village in Nuapada, Orissa, after a labour contractor coaxed her son into migrating to Andhra Pradesh with his wife and children for work. She's desperate, and hungry.

Sardars, the middlemen or labour contractors, emerged as a new set of usurers when the rural credit folded in early nineties. Their job is simple: They coax the poor people and farmers of these poorest areas of the country into migrating for work to other states where the rich industrialists, brick-kiln owners or road contractors savour the cheap but skilled labour. It's a mutual need. The industrialists outside need cheap labourers. And, the gullible farmers or the landless labourers here need work round the year.

"We send the labour to many parts of the country," says Abdul Kadar aka Babloo Khan. Kadar has been sending hordes of farmers for work since past two decades. Today, he says, it is enough. Exploitation is taking an ugly turn these days. From women being forced into prostitution to migrants being served with highly adulterated food, it's all happening out there, he laments these days. The deals, he says, are struck in Orissa, but the labourers have to work in other states. The labour machinery of a host state can't act against the contractors since the deals are struck in Orissa.

Moreover, these labourers don't qualify as migrants under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen's (Regulation of Employment & Conditions of Service) Act of 1979, since they migrate on their own volition. "The labour contractors are making a mockery of laws," laments Kadar.

While Dashrath Suna refused to speak to this reporter, Kadar was more than willing to speak about this ugly trade. "The labour contractors would not speak to you because they know what they are doing is illegal," explains Kadar. But a local tells me that Kadar is a transformed man today because he believes that God has taught him a lesson for all his sins – his young son lost both his legs a year ago in a ghastly accident.

The deals are struck in Orissa, but the labourers have to work in other states. The labour machinery of a host state can't act against the contractors since the deals are struck in Orissa.

Without delving deep into the reasons for larger-scale distress migration from the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput belt, Kadar explains that the Sardars lay a trap for villagers just before the Nua-Khai festival, shortly after the harvest. That is the time when people desperately need hard cash for household chores, and to purchase good food and clothes. Sardars give them advances ranging from Rs.2,000 to Rs.7,000, and book them for the next six months.

With a dropping rate of rural employment in this region, villagers who are reeling under abject poverty and drought of policies accept these deals unhesitatingly without realising that these advances are nothing but a binding form of loans. These loans force the small farmers and the landless to migrate to the places these Sardars would drive them to shortly after the harvest season. This money is later deducted with a heavy interest from the earnings of migrants at their new destination.

Kadar says: "One family can save up to Rs.7,000 to Rs.10,000 after six months of grueling work." But what a Sardar could earn sitting at home on these migrants in six months could be mind-boggling. "Just calculate," Kadar quips. On one 'Pathri' - a unit of three persons - a 'Seth' invests Rs.30 lakhs towards material costs of brick at their kilns. A 'Pathri' makes on an average three lakh bricks in the span of six months. On every thousand bricks, the unit earns Rs.70 to Rs.111 depending upon the city you are in. On every thousand bricks made by this unit, a Sardar gets his commission of Rs 10. So, per Pathri, an agent earns on an average Rs.3,000 for a season.

Picture: Villagers of Katabanji, near Bolangir, speak about the paucity of work and abject poverty - and drought of policies - that force them to move out of their villages in distress. Something that the agents love to capitulate on, to earn a handsome commission.

"This year, I've sent around 30,000 people to many brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh, Raipur, Maharashtra and as far away as Ayodhya. That is about 10,000 Pathris," discloses Kadar. Simply put: He'll earn a commission to the tune of - hold your breath - Rs 3 crore! People like Suna earn even more because they pack more migrants to new places of work. The Seth on the other hand benefits too. The cost of labour he pays to the migrants comes to just about one per cent of the total investment in raw material cost. A Sardar's commission is deducted from the wages of the labourers on a weekly basis.

Kadar says a long chain of people waits for its share in his commission. The local police, the Railway Police Force, the office of labour commissioner, and many more high profile officials get their kickbacks from these Sardars. "There's a good incentive for them to keep quiet," he chuckles. "We have license to send people for work outside, but that does not permit us to send so many of them on such meagre daily wages," he explains. Who says there's no industry in this belt? "Come here," Kadar says, "and I'll show you Orissa's biggest cheap-labour industry!" ⊕

Jaideep Hardikar
June 2004