1. SECC-2011: WHY needed?
2. Census Difference: Regular vs SECC
3. Confidential?
4. BPL: SECC vs Planning Commission
5. Poverty: UN Definition
6. Poverty Line: India
7. Tendulkar
8. SECC-Players involved
9. Procedure
10. Data collection
11. SECC: Methodology
    • #1: Automatically Excluded
    • #2: Automatically Included
    • #3: Deprivation indicator
12. 7 deprivation indicators:
13. Followup
14. SECC Advantages?
15. SECC: Criticism
16. Mock Questions

SECC-2011: WHY needed?

#1: Beneficiary identification

• Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011 ranks the households based on their socio-economic status.(=a database is created)
• State Governments can use this database to prepare the list of families living below poverty line (BPL).
• (Combined with UID) This database can be utilized for identification of beneficiaries for various socio-economic welfare schemes.

#2: Policy Making

• SECC census database will provide authentic information to policy makers about caste-wise population breakup in the country (e.g. socio-economic, educational status of a particular caste.)
• Based on that, Government can evaluate the performance of its past schemes/policies and update them accordingly.

Census Difference: Regular vs SECC

Census= A periodic count of the population.

	Regular population census 2011	Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) 2011
Apex organization	Census Commissioner (Home Ministry)	Rurul Development ministry + Planning Commission.
Time	Conducted every 10 year. Last census was done in 2011 and data collection is finished.	First time started in 2011 itself. But as of March 2013, Manipur, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Lakshadweep are yet to finish the data collection for SECC census 2011.
Act?	carried under census of India act 1948	Not carried under that Act.
Personal Data confidential	yes	No. (more explained below).
Purpose?	Provide general demographic information: age, gender, religion, occupation, migration etc.	help preparing BPL list and identifying beneficiaries for welfare schemes.
Motto?	Our Census, Our future	Our Census, UPSC aspirant’s tension

Confidential?

• The regular Population Census is Carried out under Census Act, 1948.
• According to this Act, Government  must keep individual’s personal information confidential.
• For example religion of Sonia/Rahul Gandhi.
• Besides aim of regular Population Census = provide overview, it is not concerned with any particular individual / household.
• In short personal data given in Population census =confidential.

• Now speaking of Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC).
• All the personal information given in SECC, will be put in public display (in Gram Sabha) except caste/tribe/religion details.
• State Governments will also use this personal data to identify beneficiaries for food/pension /other welfare schemes and for preparing BPL list.
• In future Data could be used to update individual’s detail in NPR, UID.
• In short, the data given in SECC census= NOT confidential. That’s why, Government is not carrying out SECC under Census Act, 1948.

BPL: SECC vs Planning Commission

Planning Commission	SECC
How many BPL? (=number)	Which individual is BPL? (=name)
for example, the Planning Commission estimate for a State could be that say 55% of the rural population and say 30%of the urban population is living below the poverty line.	SECC, 2011 will enable that particular State to identify the households who comprise this 55% and 30% respectively.

Poverty: UN Definition

According to United Nations (UN) poverty means following

• Fundamentally, poverty is a denial of choices and opportunities, a violation of human dignity.
• It means lack of basic capacity to participate effectively in society.
• It means not having enough to feed and clothe a family, not having a school or clinic to go to, not having the land on which to grow one’s food or a job to earn one’s living, not having access to credit.
• It means insecurity, powerlessness and exclusion of individuals, households and communities.
• It means susceptibility to violence, and
• it often implies living in marginal or fragile environments, without access to clean water or sanitation

Poverty Line: India

• Poverty line helps identifying the weaker, vulnerable sections of the society who cannot meet even their minimum food requirement [measured in terms of calorific intake].
• This line also decides the beneficiaries for  government programs like Targeted PDS, Indira Awas Yojana, food security entitlements etc., which depend on poverty line standards and hence gets huge public attention.
• But Every time we try to fix this line there is a conflict of interest between the people and state because:
• Ruling party (@union and State level) would want to show that every year % percentage of population living below poverty is decreasing otherwise opposition parties will start shouting “poverty is increasing under this regime.”
• Similarly international arena, Government would not want to make India look like a failed state in terms of poverty removal.
• So Governments always want less people fall Below poverty line)

Tendulkar

Last year a big controversy erupted when the planning commission said, “we’ve accepted the Tendulkar Committee report, according to which poverty line is following:

Area	Person earning lessthan Rs. ** per day
Urban	32
Rural	26

But due to public uproar later Government  and planning Commission had to clarify that we are is not going to use this line to identify beneficiaries for government programs and only the figures given by SECC to be considered.

SECC-Players involved

1. Ministry of Rural Development
2. Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation
3. Registrar General and Census Commissioner, India
4. State Governments
5. Each Collector/District Magistrate
6. Enumerators + Data entry operators.

Procedure

• For SECC Census, Union Government will provide cash + technical help.
• State Government machinery will do the data collection.
• District magistrate/collector will be responsible for overall SECC census in his district.
• State Government will appoint Enumerators to visit houses and do the survey.
• The primary school teachers will not be used as Enumerators for this purpose due to the ban imposed by the Right to Education Act, 2009.

Data collection

• Two men team: 1 Enumerator (to ask questions) + 1 Data Entry operator (to record data in Tablet PC)
• They visit households.
• They will also reach out to homeless populations (eg. people living in railway stations, roadsides etc)

SECC: Methodology

It uses separate methodology for surveying rural and urban households.

Area	Methodology basedon ** Committee
Rural	Saxena
Urban	Hashim

now let’s check the methodology adopted for surveying rural households : it is a three part approach

SECC for Rural Households

1. Automatically Exclude some households (based on income/assets)
2. Automatically Include some household
3. For the remaining houses: rank them based on seven deprivation factors.

#1: Automatically Excluded

If a household own any of these items: they’ll be excluded. (list not exhaustive)

1. Vehicle
2. Kisan Credit Card with credit limit of Rs. 50k and above
3. Any member is Government employee
4. Any member is earning more than Rs.10k per month.
5. Paying income tax
6. Paying professional tax
7. House has pucca walls and roof + Three or more rooms
8. Own a refrigerator
9. Own Landline phone
10. Owns irrigated land above a limit.

#2: Automatically Included

household with any of the following will be included automatically:

1. Households without shelter
2. Destitute/ living on alms
3. Manual scavengers
4. Legally released bonded labourers
5. Primitive tribal groups

What is Primitive tribal groups (PTG)?

There are the poorest of poor amongst the Scheduled Tribes (STs).  They’re identified based on three parameters

1. They use pre-agricultural level of technology for farming.
2. Very low level of literacy
3. They population is either Declining or stagnant.

#3: Deprivation indicator

So far we know that

1. SECC-2011 census aims to rank households.
2. It automatically includes/excludes certain households (as seen above)
3. Now for the remaining households (which are not automatically included or excluded) the census will rank them based on 7 Deprivation Indicators.

7 deprivation indicators:

1. Households with only one room, kucha walls and kucha roof
2. No adult member between the ages of 16 and 59
3. Female headed households with no adult male member between 16 and 59
4. Households with disabled member and no able bodied adult member
5. SC/ST household
6. Households with no literate adult above 25 years
7. Landless households deriving a major part of their income from manual casual labour

Households with the highest deprivation score will

1. Be first included in the BPL list.
2. Be first given benefit of Government welfare schemes.

ok so ^this was the methodology for doing SECC census in Rural area. Now speaking of methodology for Urban areas.

SECC urban area

It is a similar a three stage process to identify the urban poor – automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion and a scoring index. A family stands to be automatically excluded if it has either a four room house or possess any one of the asset (four wheeler, AC set, laptop) or any three of the following assets (fridge, landline phone, washing machine or a two wheeler.)

Followup

• Once the survey is complete in all States and union territories, the database will be given to Abhijit Sen Committee.
• Abhijit Sen Committee will analyse this data and come up with the exclusion criteria for Government welfare schemes. (particularly food security and pension) (e.g. if you earn xx rupees and own xx assets then you are not eligible for xyz welfare schemes.)
• Earlier Mihir Shah task force has said whoever is covered under food security, should automatically be covered under pension benefit (National Social assistant program)
• So at the moment, immediate plan of Government is SECC-2011–>> use data to identify beneficiaries for Food + Pension.

SECC Advantages?

#1: Paperless

• Survey is carried by 2 men team (Enumerator + Data entry operator).
• Data entry operator is given a tablet PC.
• When Data entry operator is entering data in the table PC, he’ll also see the scanned form of National Population register (NPR)= it means he can cross check the information provided by given household.This will drastically reduce data entry errors and enumerator discretion.

#2: Transparent

• Once data collection is complete, it’ll be given to Gram Sabha and put on public display.
• This will ensure that there is no misreporting.
• At the higher stage, data will be cross verified at block and district level officers.

SECC: Criticism

1. In the Table PC, Under sex column: only male/ female= Transgender not included.
2. Information of caste details may be misused, for more casteist politics especially when next general election is coming soon.
3. Basic amenities like a telephone connection, motorized two wheeler possession is considered a luxury.
4. For Urban area, Any household that has laptop =excluded.
5. But in Tamilnadu, many poor families are given free laptop, TV etc by State Government. Similarly UP Government is also planning to give free laptops. So poor people are afraid they’ll loose rank in deprivation index/BPL list.  (although now Government is considering dropping laptop from the exclusion list.)
6. SECC’s deprivation parameters donot consider food consumption/calorie intake. So the whole Malnutrition angle (of women and children) is missing. Similarly expenditure on health is also not considered.

Mock Questions

Q1. Which of the following ministries are involved in Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011?

1. Ministry of social justice and empowerment
2. Ministry of Rural development
3. Ministry of minority affairs
4. Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation

Ans

1. Only 1
2. Only 2
3. Only 2 and 3
4. 2 and 4

Q2. Correct statements about Socio-Economic Caste Census 2011?

1. Motto is “Our Census, Our future”
2. It is being carried under Census of India act 1948.

Ans

1. Only 1
2. Only 2
3. Only both
4. None.

Mains

GS1	True social empowerment cannot be achieved by censuses and schemes. Comment. Discuss the role of state in Social empowerment.
GS2	Write a note on Socio-Economic Caste Census of 2011.

Essay

1. Poverty and Deprivation
2. Caste Politics

Interview

1. If you were given the task of designing a new poverty line, how will you do it?
2. What do you understand by the term deprivation?
3. If we’ve to measure deprivation objectively, what parameters should be looked into? Do you think the 7 parameters adopted in SECC census are sufficient?
4. Who or what is responsible for large-scale deprivation in India?

Ref

1. Major Inputs from Mr. Manikandan Soundararajan
2. http://rural.nic.in/sites/BPL-census-2011.asp
3. http://pib.nic.in/newsite/erelease.aspx?relid=93133