Government to use scientific methods to implement social welfare schemes and fight poverty

The government is now opting for a more scientific way for implementing social welfare programmes in a move to tackle poverty better by weeding out underserving beneficiaries.

The government will be adopting the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) instead of the poverty line-based method to identify recipients for its pro-poor schemes. The SECC 2011 ranks households based on their socio-economic status to enable state governments to prepare a list of families living below the poverty line. It also makes available information regarding the socio-economic condition and education status of various castes and sections of the population.

SECC 2011 will be used by the Ministry of Rural Development from this year for its National Social Assistance Programme to pay pension to rural poor and National Rural Livelihood Mission. Both schemes use BPL data to estimate the number of the poor.

"BPL data tells us how many are poor and SECC who are those poor... it is a more targeted and scientific approach in ensuring the right person gets the benefit,” a senior official told ET.

To study the validity and efficiency of the SECC 2011 data, a Sumit Bose Committee formed. It will look over the data that identify the poor recently submitted its report, which is in favour of using the information for rural development schemes. The committee also developed a formula based on deprivation parameters to identify beneficiaries for specific schemes.

The greater the deprivation score, the higher will be the ranking of a household for getting government assistance. The government is also identifying workers under the national rural employment guarantee scheme who have reported deprivation in the SECC study.

In March 2016, the ministry amended the Indira Awaas Yojana, now called the Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana-Gramin, and changed the selection criterion of beneficiaries from "below poverty line, to the SECC 2011data.

"To ensure assistance is targeted at those who are genuinely deprived and the selection is objective and verifiable, PMAY-G, instead of selecting a beneficiary from among the BPL households, selects beneficiaries using SECC-2011data,, according to the framework for the scheme. Other government departments including health and electricity are also inclined to use SECC data.