‘We can only eat dal and potatoes’
“Yes, I spend more than `31 on some days but there are days when I don’t even earn a penny. Doesn’t a kilo of flour cost `18, doesn’t an onion kg cost `20? Look at me. Do I look happy? All I pray to God is let me be born a stone but not poor in my next life.”
Bhumani (40), who washes clothes at a house in Vasant Kunj, is a mother of four. She, along with her family, migrated to Delhi from Jhansi ten years ago in search of employment. Her eldest daughter is physically challenged. She neither goes to school, nor can she work anywhere.
“We are a family of six. I and my husband earn almost `100 per day, collectively. There are days when I spend more than `31…but there are days when we do not earn anything at all. Although we just eat potatoes or dal, even this is not cheap,” she says.
In its affidavit on Below Poverty Line cap to the Supreme Court, the Planning Commission had said only those individuals whose consumption was less than `32 per day in urban areas and `26 in rural areas will be treated as poor.
To a handful of dal, Bhumani puts in at least seven-eight glasses of water. This way, she says the family can eat it for at least three days.
Heaving a deep sigh, she says, “When we are born we do not know what will happen with us. No one tells us how difficult life is. Then slowly and slowly we are oppressed in one way or the other. By one person or the other. Being poor is a curse. I pray to God that I be made a stone in my next life…an emotionless stone…so that I feel nothing.”
She says, “I have lived most of my life now. I have faced all I could. Everyone wants to suppress us. This world is not for the poor to live.”
The capping of poor households, who qualify for BPL cards for availing themselves of subsidised foodgrains by the Planning Commission, has forced states to identify only as many poor households as “permitted,” leading to arbitrariness in the selection, and the exclusion of several. The underlying issue has been the government’s desire to project a reduction in poverty line.
In May, the Supreme Court had asked the Planning Commission why there should be a cap on the number of beneficiaries under the BPL list. From the earlier cap of `20/`15 a day four months ago, the planners sought to up it to `32/`26.
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