Index REPORT ON THE METHODOLOGY FOR MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY

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2 REPORT ON THE METHODOLOGY FOR MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY Poverty is a social phenomenon wherein a section of society is unable to fulfill even its basic necessities of life. The UN Human Rights Council has defined poverty as a human condition characterized by the sustained or chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights". The following Report consist of details about the different poverty estimation committees (Lakdawala Committee, Tendulkar Committee, Rangarajan Committee), their methodology, lacunaes in poverty estimation as well as report on Urban poverty. 1. Introduction Index 2. Evolution of Measurement of Poverty in India 3. Issues in Poverty Estimation 4. Recommendations of Rangarajan Committee Report 5. Urban Poverty Estimation (S.R Hashim Report) 1

3 REPORT ON THE METHODOLOGY FOR MEASUREMENT OF POVERTY Growth is not the sole objective of economic policy. It is necessary to ensure that the benefits of growth accrue to all sections of the society. Eradication of poverty is thus an important objective. Human beings need a certain minimum consumption of food and non-food items to survive. However the perception regarding what constitutes poverty varies over time and across countries. Nevertheless there is need for a measure of poverty. Only then, it will be possible to evaluate how the economy is performing in terms of providing a certain minimum standard of living to all its citizens. Measurement of Poverty has, therefore, important policy implications. In India we have had a long history of studies on measurement of poverty. There are in fact many approaches to it. Some analysts focus on deprivations. There are however many problems associated with this approach including difficulties in aggregating deprivations on several scores derived from different data sources. Perhaps the best approach is look at it in terms of a certain minimum consumption expenditure per person or preferably per household. Any household failing to meet this level of consumption expenditure can be treated as a poor household. This minimum level of consumption expenditure can be derived, in turn, in terms of minimum expenditure on food and non-food items. Minimum food consumption is related to fulfilling certain nutritional standards. The incidence of poverty is measured by the poverty ratio, which is the ratio of number of poor to the total population expressed as percentage. It is also known as head-count ratio. The poverty ratio is measured from an exogenously determined poverty line quantified in terms of per capita consumption expenditure over a month and the class distribution of persons obtained from the large sample survey of consumer expenditure data of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO). Evolution of Measurement of Poverty in India The Task Force (1979) The Planning Commission, in 1977, constituted a Task Force on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demand under Chairmanship of Prof. Y.K. Alagh. The Task Force (reported in 1979) defined the poverty line as monthly per capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) level of Rs for rural areas and Rs for urban areas at prices at national level. These corresponded to the money value of a basket of goods and services that would cover per capita daily calorie requirement of 2400 kcal in rural areas and 2100 kcal in urban areas, along with other non-food items such as clothing, footwear, education, health and transport, etc. in observed quantities in the basket corresponding to the recommended level of calories. These poverty lines were applied by Planning Commission uniformly across all the states. The Head Count Ratio for each State separately for urban and rural areas was computed by applying the defined poverty line to the Adjusted MPCE class wise population distribution of each State as obtained from NSSO Household Consumption Expenditure Survey of It was observed that the aggregate (for the country as a whole) private household consumption expenditure as obtained from NSS data was less than the aggregate private consumption expenditure estimated in the National Accounts Statistics (NAS). Therefore, the Task Force recommended upward adjustment of the expenditure level reported by the NSS uniformly across all expenditure classes by a factor equal to the ratio of the total private consumption expenditure obtained from the NAS to that obtained from the NSS. The Adjustment had the effect of yielding lower poverty ratios than would have been obtained from the unadjusted NSS data. 2

4 The Expert Group (Lakdawala Committee, 1993) An Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor was constituted under the Chairmanship of Professor D.T. Lakdawala, former Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission, to look into the methodology for estimation of poverty and re-define the poverty line, if necessary. The Expert Group submitted its report in The Expert Group recommended that the poverty line approach anchored in a calorie norm and associated with a fixed consumption basket (as recommended by the Task Force) might be continued. However, the Expert Group further recommended that the state specific poverty lines be worked out. This was done in two steps. The first was to work out State-specific poverty line for the base year by taking the standardized commodity basket corresponding to the poverty line at the national level and valuing it at the prices prevailing in each state in the base year. The second step was updating the poverty line to reflect current prices in a given year by applying statespecific consumer price indices. Another important recommendation of the Expert Group was to abandon the pro-rata adjustment of NSS based total household consumption expenditure to NAS based total private consumption expenditure (The gap between the two had widened overtime). The Expert Group observed that it was better to rely exclusively on the NSS for estimating the poverty ratios. The Government of India accepted the recommendations of the Expert Group with minor modifications in The poverty estimates from to based on the methodology recommended by the Expert Group are given in the table below: Percentage and Number of Poor based on the methodology recommended by Lakdawala Committee Two factors largely distinguish the Expert Group (Lakdawala) methodology of poverty estimation from those of the Task Force (Alagh). First, the Expert Group (Lakdawala) method uses statespecific poverty lines as against national poverty line for estimation of poverty in the state; it thereby captures the cost of living in the states more accurately (as compared to the Task Force method). Second, the Expert Group (Lakdawala) uses the state-wise consumption distribution of the NSS without any adjustment to the NAS consumption. This is a major departure from the Task Force method, which did this adjustment on a pro-rata basis. 3

5 Tendulkar Committee Report Fundamentally, the concept of poverty is associated with socially perceived deprivation with respect to basic human needs. As a result, social perceptions are taken to play a dominant role in ascertaining deprivation although self-perceptions cannot be ignored altogether and aggregated individual preferences may have to be respected in satisfying any given need in most cases as we argue below in the context of consumption poverty. These basic human needs are usually listed in the material dimension as the need to be adequately nourished, the need to be decently clothed, the need to be reasonably sheltered, the need to escape avoidable diseases, the need to be (at least) minimally educated and the need to be mobile for purposes of social interaction and participation in economic activity. The Expert Group thus confined the study of poverty in private consumption dimension only. The Expert Group (Tendulkar) did not construct a poverty line. It adopted the officially measured urban poverty line of based on Expert Group (Lakdawala) methodology and converted this poverty line (which is URP-consumption based) into MRPconsumption.8 The method of estimation of poverty line and poverty ratio suggested by the Expert Group (Tendulkar) is described in the following three steps: Step 1: Convert the URP-consumption based urban poverty line into MRP consumption based poverty line (MRP distribution = consumer expenditure data is collected using 365-day recall period for five non-food items viz., clothing, footwear, durable goods, education and institutional medical expenses, and 30-day recall period for the remaining items). Here, the MRP-consumption based urban poverty line is worked out as the level of per capita consumption expenditure in the MRP consumption distribution that corresponds to the bottom 25.7 per cent of the population, which is the official urban poverty ratio derived from the Expert Group (Lakdawala) methodology using the poverty line and the class distribution of consumption, both based on URP-consumption. Step 2: State-specific urban poverty lines are derived from the (MRP-consumption based) national urban poverty line using urban state-relative-to-all-india fisher indices. Step 3: The state-specific rural poverty lines are worked out from the state-specific urban poverty lines by applying within-state rural-relative-to-urban Fisher indices. Precentage and Number of Poor Estimated Expert Group (Tendulkar) Methodology Decline in Poverty Ratio Estimated from Expert Group (Tendulkar) Methodology 4

6 Issues in Poverty Estimation Concept of Poverty Line Basket The first question is of the use of a single all-india poverty line (or, rather, a poverty line basket or PLB) to derive state specific, rural-urban basket of goods and services the access (or, otherwise) to which separates the poor from the non-poor. This becomes crucial in a continental-sized country such as ours that is marked by significant variability in living environment (including, but not limited to, climatic conditions), in dietary patterns and preferences and, in prices of goods and services across states and as between rural and urban areas even within the same state. Calculating Income or Consumption Expenditure: which is better? The methodologies of the 1979 Task Force (Alagh) and the Lakdawala and Tendulkar Expert Groups used metric of living standards as consumption expenditure rather than incomes of the households. This conscious decision follows from the significant difficulties of capturing household incomes through recall-based (typically with a 30-day reference period) surveys canvased over a moving sample of households. These difficulties are particularly sizeable in the case of households with self-employment as the principal source of income. In the case of such households, the flow of incomes may be staccato at the time of harvests in the case of agriculture, uneven over the year (as in trading) or uncertain (in agriculture). Also, these households may be drawing incomes from more than one enterprise where a major proportion of these enterprises do not maintain full accounts/balance-sheets. Consequently, even in the absence of willfull under-reporting of incomes, there are serious problems in capturing the incomes of self-employed households. In the case of households dependent on wage employment getting a measure of their wage incomes is possible from the NSS Employment-Unemployment Surveys. Even in this case, however, households dependent on casual wage labour (accounting for 34.5% of rural households and 11.8% of urban households) face considerable intra year variability in income flows from casual labour since they are not assured of employment through the year. This problem is absent in the case of households having regular wage/ salaries employment as their principal source of income. However, even in the case of these households, problems of capturing their incomes from their non-labour assets remain. Nutrition Norms, Nutrition Content of Food Basket and Nutrition Outcomes The report of the 1979 Task Force (Alagh), the calorie norms developed by the Task Force became the basis of the official all India PLB,separately for the rural and urban populations, and their price- adjusted monetary equivalents became the state-level poverty lines on the recommendations of the Expert Group (Lakdawala). However, Expert Group (Tendulkar) consciously moved away using calorie norms to derive the all India PLB. However, now there has been a shift away from a calorie-intensive diet towards a more diversified food basket richer in proteins and fats. This shift has occurred across expenditure classes. These shifts in consumption patterns could be reflective of lower calorie requirements following the changes in occupational patterns towards a more sedentary life style, improvements in access to better sanitation and hygiene and general improvements in health status leading to better retention of ingested calories and other nutrients. Thus nutrition calculation can be sole criteria for calculating poverty. Comparison of NSS and NAS Estimates of Household Consumption Expenditure Like most of the countries, Indian statistical system is endowed with two parallel estimates of private consumption. These are: 5

7 (a) (b) National Sample Survey (NSS) estimates, which comes from the household consumer expenditure survey and yields class distribution of consumption by sectors (rural and urban) and by regions (states, and sub-state level such as NSS regions, which are formed by grouping contiguous districts similar in density of population and cropping pattern). National Accounts Statistics (NAS) estimates, originating from the Central Statistical Office (CSO). It yields a scalar value of consumption for the nation as a whole, with no disaggregation by region or class (except by broad commodity groups). These two estimates of consumption (NSS and NAS) do not match in any country; India is no exception. What is alarming in India is that the difference between the NSS and the NAS consumption is widening overtime. For example, the difference was less than 10% in the late 1970s; it rose to 50% in At the aggregate level, the NAS consumption has always been more than the NSS consumption. Since the NAS consumption is greater than the NSS consumption, and if the latter is raised pro-rata by region and expenditure groups of the population, the poverty ratio after such adjustment would turn out to be lower than what would have been estimated from the NSS consumption data without such adjustment. Recommendations of Rangarajan Committee Report Real incomes and real consumption have grown at a significantly faster pace between and than during any comparable period since the early 1950 s. Over this period, aggregate GDP and per capita GDP (both at constant prices) grew at an annual average rate of 8.5 and 6.9 percent. Also over this period, real private per capita consumption grew at a compound Annual Growth Rate of 2.9 and 3.4 percent, respectively, in rural and urban India. Along-side, significant changes have occurred in the composition of private consumption expenditure: a reduction in the share of food, of food grains within food and of cereals within food grains. Thus, new committee recommend following methodology for poverty estimation Choice of Recall Period Three estimates of consumption along with its regional and class distribution are presently available from the NSSO depending upon the recall (reference) period of data collection. These are: (a) Uniform Recall Period (URP), (b) Mixed Recall Period (MRP) since , and (c) Modified Mixed Recall Period (MMRP) for and In the Uniform Recall Period (URP), the consumption expenditure data are collected using 30-day recall period for all the items. In the Mixed Recall Period (MRP), the consumption expenditure data are collected using 365-day recall period for five non-food items and 30-day recall period for remaining items. In the Modified Mixed Recall Period (MMRP), the consumer expenditure data is gathered from the households using the recall period of: (a) 365-days for clothing, footwear, education, institutional medical care, and durable goods, (b) 7-days for edible oil, egg, fish and meat, vegetables, fruits, spices, beverages, refreshments, processed food, pan, tobacco and intoxicants, and (c) 30-days for the remaining food items, fuel and light, miscellaneous goods and services including non-institutional medical; rents and taxes. Experts are of the view that the mix of reference periods for different items underlying the MMRP -estimates may be expected to yield estimates that are closer to their true value. Also the issue of difference between NSS and NAS will be solved as the differences between the two estimates were lower with NSS estimates based on MMRP. 6

8 New Poverty Line Basket In defining the new consumption basket separating the poor from the rest, the Expert Group (Rangarajan) is of the considered view that it should contain a food component that addresses the capability to be adequately nourished as well as some normative level of consumption expenditure for essential non-food item groups (Education, clothing, conveyance and house rent) besides a residual set of behaviorally determined non-food expenditure. As a first step towards defining the food component of the poverty line basket, the Expert Group (Rangarajan) has recomputed the average requirements of calories, proteins and fats, per- capita per-day at the all- India level for , separately for the rural and the urban populations. This has been done by reference to the 2010 ICMR norms differentiated by age, gender and activity-status; the age and gender distribution of AllIndia rural and urban populations as per the 2011 Population Census; and, the broad work status distribution, again by age and gender and separately for the rural and urban population, as per the NSS 68th Round Employment Unemployment Survey ( ). Revised Norms for Calories, Proteins and Fats The activity structure of population has changed in such a manner that the proportion of population in the activity categories requiring relatively higher calorie intake is now lower. The proportion of population engaged as heavy workers has reduced overtime, while that of moderate or sedentary workers has increased. This lowers the average calorie norm of the entire population because calorie requirement of moderate or sedentary workers is much less than that of heavy workers. Accordingly, the energy requirement works out to 2,155 kcal per person per day in rural areas and 2,090 kcal per person per day in urban areas. Deriving the non-food component of the poverty line basket The non-food component of the PLB has both a normative component and, a component given by the observed consumption pattern of households in the fractilegroup in which the food component of the PLB is located. The normative component relates to the private consumption expenditure aimed at capabilities in respect of education, clothing, shelter (rent) and mobility (conveyance). Since it is difficult to set minimum norms for these essential non-food items, the Expert Group (Rangarajan) recommends that observed expenditures on these items by households located in the median fractile (45-50 percentile) be treated as the normative minimum private consumption expenditure on these items. The median fractile (45-50%) values of clothing expenses, rent, conveyance and education expenses are treated as the normative requirements of the basic non-food expenses of clothing, housing, mobility and education of a poverty line basket. This works out to Rs.141 per capita per month in rural areas and Rs.407 in urban areas. The observed expenses of all other non-food expenses of the fractile classes that meet the nutrition requirements are considered as part of the poverty line basket. This works out to Rs.277 per capita per month in rural areas and Rs.344 in urban areas. The new poverty line thus work out to monthly per capita consumption expenditure of Rs.972 in rural areas and Rs.1,407 in urban areas in For a family of five, this translates into a monthly consumption expenditure of Rs.4,860 in rural areas and Rs.7,035 in urban areas. The Expert Group (Rangarajan) recommends the updation of the poverty line in the future using the Fisher Index. The weighting diagram for this effort can be drawn from the NSSO s Consumer Expenditure Survey. For the Food group, the Expert Group (Rangarajan) recommends that the current practice of relying on the unit values derivable from the NSSO Consumer Expenditure Surveys should continue till such time a new CPI of CSO with a weighting diagram based on the pattern of consumption becomes available. In respect of non-food- items, the price indices available in the exiting CSO Consumer Price Indices can be used in the construction of requisite Fisher indices. 7

9 The Fisher price index is an index formula used in price statistics for measuring the price development of goods and services, on the basis of the baskets from both the base and the current period. It is defined as the geometric average of the Laspeyres price index (which only uses the base period basket) and the Paasche price index (which only uses the current period basket). For this reason, the Fisher price index (named after American economist Irving Fisher) is also known as the "ideal" price index. The Fisher index is calculated by taking the geometric mean of the Laspeyres and Paasche indices: Urban Poverty Estimation (S.R Hashim Report) One of the most remarkable features of the second half of the twentieth century has been the spectacular growth of urban population in the world. Developing countries, in particular, have experienced rapid urbanization and the mushrooming of huge metropolises. However, the level of urbanisation in India is one of the lowest in the world. With about 31% of the total population living in the urban areas (Census 2011), India is less urbanized compared to many countries of Asia, viz., China (49%), Indonesia (50%), Japan (91%), South Korea (83%), and Pakistan (36%). Urbanisation can result from (1) natural increase in population (2) net migration from rural areas to urban areas and (3) reclassification of villages as towns largely because of changes in the nature of economic activities. Features of Urban Poverty The urban poverty manifests in the form of inadequate provision of housing and shelter, water, sanitation, health, education, social security and livelihoods along with special needs of vulnerable groups like women, children, differently abled and aged people. Most of the poor are involved in informal sector activities where there is constant threat of eviction, removal, confiscation of goods and almost non-existent social security cover. Even when segments of the urban population are not income-poor, they face deprivation in terms of lack of access to sanitary living conditions, and their well-being is hampered by discrimination, social exclusion, crime, violence, insecurity of tenure, hazardous environmental conditions and lack of voice in governance. These deprivations are often cumulative in nature i.e. one dimension of poverty is often the cause of or contributor to another dimension. The main features are: a) Most of the urban poor are engaged in informal sector activities as they lack adequate education and skills. b) Employment and livelihoods of the High numbers of male migrants, living in temporary shelters, in the labour force is a common feature of urban life. c) In many urban areas, a large number of people live in cramped, overcrowded and often unsanitary conditions especially in slums which are prone to environmental hazards such as natural (floods, landslides, etc.) and man-made disasters (e.g. fire, accidents, pollution, etc.) d) Most of the urban poor live in deplorable housing conditions with high implicit and explicit costs of housing. e) In the urban areas, the poor face a lack of access to quality education which results in higher proportions of the monthly income of the urban poor being spent on basic education for their children f) The nutritional health indicators of urban poor are worse than rural people. Increasing number of communicable and non-communicable diseases, malnutrition among children, inadequate water and sanitation facilities, etc. add to poor health conditions of the urban people. 8

10 g) The poor standard of living and lack of basic services is aggravated by the limited access to financial services. Vulnerability of Urban Poor Vulnerability is a highly dynamic situation which the poor always confront throughout their lives in the absence of proper social security measures. It is defined in terms of the threat of the family falling into poverty in future. It is a measure of the volatility of household incomes and exposure to various external risks. The higher level of urbanization which India is witnessing now is associated with more severe strains on urban employment and urban housing and problems of congestion, inadequate urban infrastructure, insufficient urban amenities, lack of appropriate social security measures and degradation in the quality of urban life adding to urban poverty, deprivations and vulnerabilities. In this backdrop, the Hashim Committee captured urban poverty in three categories of vulnerabilities that the urban poor is subjected to such as a) residential vulnerability; b) occupational vulnerability; and c) social vulnerability. Residential Vulnerability The most visible manifestation of urban poverty is in the crowding of large masses of the urban poor under the open sky, completely vulnerable to the extremes of nature, or in precarious and unsanitary slums in sub-human conditions of survival and always lacking a sense of safety and security. In these crowded, illegal and insecure settlements, there is acute denial of minimum basic amenities required for human survival. In conditions of abysmal hygiene and sanitation, it is not surprising that health conditions in slums are dreadful, to which children are particularly vulnerable. Infant mortality rates are higher by 1.8 times in slums as compared to non-slum areas. Nearly 50 per cent of urban child mortality is the result of poor sanitation and lack of access to clean drinking water in the urban slums. Social Vulnerability Socially vulnerable groups are defined as those groups who routinely face severe social barriers to livelihood, food and dignified living. In any analysis of the problems of the urban poor, it is important to disaggregate their population, and to recognise that there are some particularly vulnerable groups, even more at risk in an environment of urban poverty. Among other most defenceless groups are the aged who are without care, people with disabilities, the homeless, and people living with leprosy, mental illness and AIDS. Of paramount vulnerability in conditions of urban poverty are children, and particularly those who are especially at risk, such as children without adult care, street and working children, and children of destitute and stigmatised parents. They are vulnerable because of poor sanitary conditions, inadequate nutrition, psycho-social stresses, exclusion from schools, erratic or unreliable adult protection or sometimes its absence and the coercion to work. The school enrolment and retention rates in the urban slums are alarmingly low. For children who are forced to work, conditions are particularly precarious. Children in poor households are engaged in debilitating forms of work that not only keep them in poverty but are hazardous to life and ultimately rob them of the personal development that society offers to other children. Children usually start working in extremely arduous jobs at a very early age and never get the opportunity in subsequent years to go to school or to achieve incomes to raise them above the levels of extreme poverty, even after attaining adulthood. 9

11 Occupational Vulnerability The large majority of the urban poor are trapped in low end jobs insecure low paid, low productivity with debilitating work conditions mainly in the informal sector. This is an extremely heterogeneous sector, comprising daily wage workers, construction labour, petty traders, hawkers, street children, sex-workers, rikshaw puller, domestic workers, etc. Labour markets remain highly segmented, in which the vulnerability and desperate survival needs of the unorganised workers and high levels of competition amongst the large army of work-seekers, enable exploitation by employers, and sometimes middlemen who mediate access. The capacity of urban areas to create jobs well above the poverty line in the formal sector has been dwindling. The capital intensity of modern urban enterprises, industrial location policy, energy crises, industrial sickness, labour unrest, restrictive legislation, frozen housing activity and low level of investment in the development of urban infrastructure and services have colluded to keep down the growth of urban employment. A non-formal sector has been growing in interstitial spaces of economic activities ignored or exploited by the formal sector. It includes waste collection and recycling, shelter development in marginal and ordinarily uninhabitable lands, car and lorry transport, low cost catering services, repair and maintenance services, street vending, etc. Methodology to identify the urban poor Taking note of the multi-dimensional nature of urban poverty, the Expert Group is of the view that incomebased identification of the urban poor would be flawed because there was no objective mechanism by which the declared income of the applicant could be verified by the Government Authorities. The Expert Group, therefore, decided to rely on more visible and easily recordable indicators of levels of living and quality of life, like the type of house, access to essential conveniences, nature and quality of work and various other social disabilities from which the household might suffer. In terms of these indicators, a poor (or commonly called a BPL) household would stand out on the basis of three categories of vulnerabilities: Residential Vulnerability, Occupational Vulnerability and Social Vulnerability. Each one of these vulnerabilities would be qualified by a number of indicators which would also give an idea of the depth or intensity of the vulnerability. Residential Vulnerability i. If the household is houseless 19. ii. iii. If the household has a house of roof and wall made of plastic/polythene. If the household has a house of only one room or less with the material of wall being grass, thatch, bamboo, mud, un-burnt brick or wood and the material of roof being grass, thatch, bamboo, wood or mud. Occupational vulnerability i. If the household has no income from any source, then that household will be automatically included. ii. iii. Any household member (including children) who is engaged in a vulnerable occupation like beggar/ rag picker, domestic worker (who are actually paid wages) and sweeper/sanitation worker /mali) should be automatically included. If all earning adult members in a household are daily wagers or ir-regular wagers, then that household should be automatically included. 10

12 Social Vulnerability i. Child-headed household i.e. if there is no member of the household aged 18 years and above. ii. If there is no able-bodied person aged between 18 and 60 years in the household, i.e. all members of the household aged between 18 and 60 years either have a disability20 or are chronically ill. iii. If all earning adult members in a household are either disabled, chronically ill or aged more than 65 years then that household should be automatically included. The Expert Group recommends that the set of households qualified for automatic inclusion in the set of BPL households should be taken as hard core poor. Of the middle group of households (neither automatically excluded nor automatically included) a substantial number of households will score zero. Grievance Redressal Mechanism The Expert Group feels that the identification of urban poor should be a participatory exercise involving general public at the ward level with an appropriate grievance redressal mechanism. This is to guarantee proper targeting of the urban poor and to confirm that the true vulnerable sections of the society are not left out from the exercise. There should be proper sharing of the information so that the urban poor are made aware of the precise nature of the vulnerability that they face and get the benefits of the specific policies and programmes implemented by the Central and State government. This would also ensure greater transparency and accountability in the process. It was also proposed by the Expert Group to give greater flexibility to the State Government regarding the appointment of nodal officers and how to carry out the mechanism. In cases where the households are not satisfied with their status or that of others (i.e., they are wrongly included or excluded from the BPL list) or if they feel that they are being wrongly placed in a particular classification or if they have doubts about their scoring of vulnerabilities, they can approach their respective Ward offices and make their claims with appropriate documentary evidence. For this purpose the State Government will designate officers who will be competent to facilitate the inspection and accept/take a decision on claims and objections from the public. Given the increased usage of mobile phones and computer in urban areas, a number of methods to help the people register their complaints can be plugged into the system. Some of them include SMS service, helpline numbers, etc which would make the system more user-friendly and less time consuming. For example a person dissatisfied with his status in the list can message a simple NO expressing his discontent following which he could be given a token number based on which he can go toward office with his supporting documents. This would save his time waiting in queues etc. He may also call up the helpline number and get his queries clarified. The third way possibly could be an service where the person can explain his situation to the designated officer and seek further information about his classification. Thus a user friendly Grievance Redressal Mechanism should be a part of the system to ensure that all the urban poor are included. This will help in avoiding the inclusion and exclusion errors which are likely to occur in any BPL surveys. This will also make the system more accountable, responsive and transparent. The grievance redressal mechanism will be the gauge to measure the efficiency and effectiveness since it will provide a feedback on the exercise. The whole process of grievance redressal should take place within a stipulated period of time which would be decided by the State Governments. 11