Deprivation/Destitution and Inclusive Growth

Jan Breman at the lectern, with Sashi Kumar, N.Ram and Shree  Kumar on the dais

The TG Narayanan Memorial Lecture 2013 delivered today, at 6:15 pm, by Dr. Jan Breman on Caring for Destitution or Not? was an eye-opener for students of journalism and audience alike. The Lecture series,  organised by the Asian College of Journalism was presided over by Mr.N.Ram, Trustee, Media Development Foundation and well-attended by students of journalism, invitees from other institutions among a host of other dignitaries.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Ram recollected Mr.T.G.Narayanan’s services in the field of journalism, particularly with The Hindu as its Rangoon correspondent and then as the Calcutta correspondent where his outstanding work in covering the Bengal famine was much appreciated and is still much talked about. While lamenting the poor role of the news media in covering chronic hunger in the hinterlands, he also stressed on the importance of journalists in cultivating a sense of proportion/balance in their coverage of news. Mere trivialization of news is not journalism, he averred, and added on a sad note that, the general tendency in Indian journalism today was to avoid presenting the gloomy side, and instead, they keep presenting the brighter side alone. But that should not be the case. In his concluding remarks, he sounded a note of caution to the journalism fraternity, saying, 'you can study anything under the sun, but you can’t be a good journalist unless you cover deprivation'! 

The speaker of the day Dr. Jan Breman spoke extensively about his research on the area of deprivation in the Indian State of Gujarat. Excerpts from his lecture:

Members of the audience, absorbed and spell-bound..!

My presentation will focus on West India where I have carried out fieldwork in both rural and urban localities during the past half century. From the pre-colonial era onwards members of the tribal caste called Halpati in south Gujarat used to be attached as farm servants to the main landowners of higher castes. Engaged in a condition of bondage they had a right to livelihood and received social benefits in exchange for serving their patrons dutifully and loyally in a relationship of life time duration which was passed on from generation to generation.

the CLRI Auditorium, Adyar

In rural Gujarat, the greatest political capital was made out of the state pension for which old and disabled agricultural workers qualified who lived in destitution. In 1981 the then Congress government launched this scheme as an election stunt. A few years later, it declared that the state pension would be paid to all aged and handicapped workers without adult children and with no means of their own. They would be entitled to receive 50 rupees per person per month and 100 rupees per family, an allowance which was doubled in 1991. Although insufficient for survival, such trifles would alleviate the plight of all those unable to sustain themselves. 

I have monitored in the area of my research the impact of the Social Security Bill passed in parliament in late 2008 and meant to alleviate the destitution of the most vulnerable categories, specifically old aged men and women, widows, and handicapped adults and minors belonging to households which have a priority ranking in the bpl ist (i.e scoring between 0 and 16). Of such households stuck far below the threshold of deprivation in the four villages of my longitudinal research in south Gujarat not yet one out of five qualify for benefits that should have been made available to them under the social security bill. It means that the large majority of the non-labouring poor are excluded from their legal dues. But more deprived from receiving entitlements than the old aged and widows are the disabled, a substantial category which barely figures in the government statistics. The provision of state benefits in the villages of my recurrent anthropological fieldwork have been rechecked by the staff of a rural hospital with a long standing practice of community health interventions in the vicinity. Local-level based animators belonging to the milieu of the poor themselves were selected and trained to conduct a survey. They were asked to go around in the village of their residence – four, of which two are also the sites of my own fieldwork – to identify all inhabitants who are improvident and unable to take care of their own maintenance, to help preparing the files of all those who are potential beneficiaries and to facilitate the processing of their applications by the district authorities. In the survey carried out in the first half of 2012 a total of 589 persons (all of them old aged, widowed or deserted women and handicapped) were listed irrespective of their bpl status and meeting or not the formal criteria required to become eligible for a benefit, eg. Scoring not above 16 in the bpl ranking, having no adult son, in the case of widows an annual income of less than 2,400 rupees, and handicapped for more than 80 per cent of their abilities. It means that out of the total population in these four villages roughly 7 per cent would have to be classified as destitute. It is a rather low estimate, in my opinion, caused by a style of work and life which makes the labouring poor vulnerable to an inordinately high morbidity and premature death rate. Of males in particular, as indicated by the very large proportion of females found in destitution, not less than four fifth of the 589 identified. From this total, only 118, or one out of five, comply with the formal criteria set for granting the stipulated cash benefit, but out of this number only 38 managed to become registered as beneficiaries.

The cash benefit, that comes as a prize for the fortunate ones is what amounts to a lottery, moderates but fails to end destitution because it does not even allow them to satisfy their most minimal needs. The money orders for what are meant to be monthly allowances are sent with long, variable intervals in between and this irregularity adds to the uncertainty that the benefits will continue to be disbursed. Recipients are not informed why their entitlements are suddenly withdrawn. This may happen when a minor son reaches the age of 21 years, since he is henceforth supposed to take care of his widowed mother or aged parents. In other instances there is no good reason for abrupt stopping payment. Can this be attributed to a temporary problem, lack of sufficient expertise, which will be over once the agencies involved in making the remittances become better versed with what they have to do?