[Music]

so it has not been long since I started

introducing myself as an economist

bureaucrat until very recently I used to

introduce myself as an indian economic

service officer government servant

bureaucrat all interchangeably that is

till I came across this supposedly I was

in a battle this article completely

ruined my day

add to that the smirks I got from my

near and dear ones anyhow I still

subscribed to this magazine so no issues

there what it made me realize was that I

needed an image makeover so I thought a

lot about it and finally decided to add

the Economist to the bureaucrat and

become an economist bureaucrat as simple

as that the dividends had been great and

still reaping them in fact quips apart I

joined the government in 2013 it's

almost been five years and most of these

years were spent working for the rural

housing division of the Ministry of

Rural Development as a part of the

Grameen ava's yogena

which is a part of the housing for all

by 2022 mission these years have been

challenging rewarding satisfying in

equal measures I've learned a lot of

intriguing things things related to

program architecture scheme delivery

scheme execution and today I'll try

compressing all these learnings into

three takeaways some of them this sounds

counterintuitive even paradoxical at

first but bear with me and we'll see eye

to eye coming to the first takeaway

whenever it comes to government welfare

schemes the who should always precede

the watson house the central question

one should be asking is who is getting

the benefit rather than what are the

benefits why is the scheme named like

this what is the budget allocation how

is the scheme being implemented and so

on of course I am assuming that the why

has already been dealt with and all of

you fully are

agree with the need of having a vagina

or Ayushmann Khurrana if not they will

always be people who do not then that's

a separate talk altogether now most of

you are either taxpayers or are going to

be taxpayers by the end of your lifetime

and I'm just referring to income tax

here I'm not even taking into account

the plethora of indirect taxes you're

paying on a daily basis so the

government is sitting pretty on a heap

of public funds and lot of these public

funds are being analyzed into government

welfare schemes in fact income tax is

considered a very effective instrument

for redistributing income from the haves

to the have-nots so shouldn't you be

interested in knowing who they have not

sir are the funds going to right people

but yeah big but in my limited

interaction with people that rarely

seems to be the case people are more

interested in knowing what the budget

allocation of a scheme is rather than

whom that but it is going to a lot of my

friends know the features of the scheme

inside out by heart their hats off to

them actually but when I ask them a very

simple question that who is that benefit

going to they give me profound responses

like Gareeb Kojiro BPL families Camilla

Agha something which roughly translates

to the poor or the below poverty line

families must be getting the benefits

this is really wonder whether as a

nation we are fascinated with terms like

bereaved and deep in these are like a go

to terms for clubbing together all

poverty-stricken households reducing

them into faceless entities under

actually I was also pretty much like

that till five years back I didn't put

any thought into the nuances of whom the

first thing the government taught me is

that it takes the task of defining and

identifying this who pretty seriously I

joined the Ministry of Rural Development

in December 2014 at that time the earth

fell housing program known as Indra

Ivana Iowa was too

an operation that very same year that

the Comptroller and Auditor General

better known as C and AG had come out

with a performance audit report of ia

why in dieting report two hundred pages

of whatever imaginable could go wrong

with this scheme the two ways of looking

at audit although one way is that you

see it as a fault finding exercise and

become very defensive about it

the other way is that you see it as an

opportunity for improvement

thankfully the perception at that time

was that the audit has already done the

hard work of identifying the wrongs now

let's set it right an entire chapter of

this audit report was devoted to

selection of ineligible beneficiaries

under I every under Iowa selection was

done from something called a permanent

wait list very interesting too so I used

to feel that it sounds like you have to

permanently wait for the benefits but

just demystifying it it was a list of

BPL households which had been ranked how

did one arrive at the permanent wait

list at the first step the planning

commission the erstwhile planning

commission would carry out this

elaborate exercise of defining poverty

lines and poverty ratios for each and

every state based on sample data from

certain households these poverty ratios

say 50 person for bajar 40 person for

mother Pradesh where then communicated

to the States but percentages have

limited relevance in identifying actual

BPL families on ground for actual

identification the Ministry of Rural

Development would carry out a parallel

exercise which was known as bps fences

it used to be carried out every five

years it would cover each and every

household in rural India the households

would be asked questions on

socio-economic parameters like what was

the type of house they were living in

their educational attainment the

sanitation status etc etc and based on

the responses they would be scored then

ranked so say Bihar has hundred

households in the BPL census and they

have been scored and ranked

and the Planning Commission has told me

her you have 50% poverty ratio the score

of the 50th household becomes the

poverty line and those with scores below

it become the BPL families the figure on

the permanent wait list and eligible to

receive benefits under Iowa sounds

simple but no matter how simple it

sounds this exercise had many

shortcomings one of the major one being

that it was not leading to deprivation

specific targeting anyhow someone was

doing better on the housing front but

badly on other fronts could have a

better likelihood of getting a house

then someone who was doing badly on the

housing front basically essentially what

this exercise was doing was reducing

each household to a score without

identifying the root cause of its

poverty it was not taking into account

the multi-dimensional nature of poverty

the fact that houses could be poor due

to various reasons someone may be poor

because they don't have access to

educational opportunities others could

be poor because they have ailing members

health issues and others could be poor

because they can't afford working

capital to till their land so they have

to get into a debt trap and yet others

may be poor because they lack a proper

shelter and that affects the quality of

life on a daily basis it's very obvious

I think that not all of them require a

house only those need a house who lack a

proper house period and that is what we

sought to rectify in the new hours yours

now

while we were redefining the who for the

new hours yours now

I thought I came across a second major

learning which is also going to be the

second takeaway this one is very

interesting objectivity begins and ends

with subjectivity okay just for the sake

of it let's make it qualified

subjectivity you need subjectivity to

define the who who is deserving and you

need objectivity to identify the who to

get to the sounds watertight right

in my limited experience even when it

comes to identification alone

objectivity does not take you very far

what you are more likely to end up with

this is very reasonable and effective

mix of objectivity and subjectivity when

it comes to defining and identifying the

who let's put things into perspective we

being government servants were very

quick to realize that defining who is

deserving and who is not deserving is a

loaded exercise it's akin to walking the

wire and there would be many

subjectivities value judgments involved

so basically what would finally matter

is the credibility of the forum which is

exercising this subjectivity therefore

the task of redefining the who was given

to an expert group full of people whose

domain knowledge expertise credibility

you can't doubt at this very same time

the Ministry of Rural Development had

almost finalized the socio-economic and

caste census data

sdcc known as sec also so sec C had been

commissioned in 2011 to replace the BPL

census it was a more comprehensive data

set it captured information on a lot

more parameters taking into account the

multi-dimensional nature of poverty but

by the time it has been finalized it had

become like a hot potato no scheme was

coming forward to adopt the ACCC for

identification of beneficiaries in the

government and this is one thing you

must know we don't really believe in the

first mover advantage because when

things go wrong they go very wrong so in

retrospect I believe it was a very brave

decision to adopt a CCC for the first

time for such a massive scheme and since

then there has been no looking back for

secc it's been adopted by various other

schemes for identification

now this expert group went through

various combinations various

permutations of parameters and ACCC to

arrive at the who after a lot of

deliberation eligibility boiled down to

three steps

the first step was known as automatic

exclusion there are 13 parameters which

were considered to be proxies for wealth

and well-being

these were parameters like whether a

household owns a landline whether it has

a refrigerator it has a motorized

vehicle whether it has a member who's

paying income tax or professional tax

and many more parameters any household

which qualified on even one of these

parameters was removed from eligibility

so it was thought that these households

have the money to construct their own

houses they don't need assistance from

the government though it sounds

subjective this is what it was done and

in the second step out of all the

remaining households those families

which were living in semi popke or popke

houses that is either the roof or wall

was made of parker material to remove

from eligibility by now you're down to

capture houses only in the third step

families living in picture houses with

more than two rooms were removed from

eligibility so you finally arrive at the

universe to start with 18 Perot

households had been surveyed under the

ACCC by the time we were done applying

the filters we were down to four Koror

households now in the first phase of the

new Havas yogena assistance was given

only for constructing one Koror houses

in three years and there were four Koror

Clements so whom do we give it to first

for this a priority list was prepared at

the first level

prioritization was done on the basis of

housing deprivation parameters because

obviously those who lack proper house

need a house first

so for subgroups perform what sorry for

groups were formed these priority groups

where the houseless followed by those

living in 0 1 & 2 room catch a house

within each priority groups families

belonging to certain deprived and

stigmatized communities historically

deprived communities were elevated and

this was known as compulsory inclusion

so now we had 8 subgroups for priority

groups and 2 subgroups within each prior

after this within each subgroup scores

deprivation scores from zero to five

were given on the basis of certain

parameters this led to the introduction

of six more strata by now we were down

to 48 strata for groups two subgroups

and six traitor within each subgroup

sounds enough it wasn't

we had panchayats for more than one

hundred plus households we tied at the

same score within the same strata so we

introduced something called the

tiebreaker parameters five of them sadly

still not enough and by now we had run

out of SCCC parameters that

comprehensive data set had been

exhausted we had reached the limits of

our objectivity so after a lot of

deliberation and thinking it was

ultimately decided by the expert group

that the decision to decide these tie

breakers would be given to the gram

sabha so despite investing our blood and

sweat into keeping this entire exercise

fully objective we had to finally rely

on the qualified discretion of the gram

sabha again a very credible forum a

constitutional body best equipped to

make local level decisions but we had

come a full circle we started with the

qualified subjectivity of the expert

group and ended with the qualified

discretion of the gram sabha plus in a

relentless pursuit for making this

exercise fully objective we had

introduced jargons like automatic

exclusion compulsory inclusion

deprivation scores tiebreaker semi catch

apakah and what not too complex for any

layman to understand and this brings me

to my third and final takeaway for

tonight objectivity often comes at the

cost of simplicity there is an inherent

trade-off between the two by the time

you arrive at the who with near perfect

objectivity you may lose track of how

you got there so I've started I mean in

the last two three years I've started

taking objectivity with a pinch of salt

yes it does root out discretion very

good but what it also

is introduced it introduces us like a

really complex web of rules and logic

which becomes a black box for the

ultimate beneficiary these pitfalls were

realized when we release the partially

ranked list of houses to the gram sabha

for verification and completing the

ranking many households found themselves

missing what these households were more

aggrieved about was wider seemingly

identical neighbor had made it to the

list and then they were also households

which should have been there on the list

but did not figure due to genuine data

capture errors in the SECC there was

this vise spread sense of being wrong it

so for all these households it was

decided that a period of six months

would be given for them to submit their

claims to the Block office and this was

followed by a real survey of all these

households the final step in the

research would be informing the claimant

as to why he made it to the Who or did

not make it to the room because everyone

deserves to know summing up what is

governance all about according to me as

far as my limited experience goes it's

essentially about the who the who we

don't tend to discuss much about but

this who lies at the heart of governance

so let's discuss the let's start putting

a face to the who let us know who he is

secondly governance like many other

things in life is a lot about striking a

fine balance between objectivity and

subjectivity it's about walking the

tightrope between objectivity and

subjectivity very easy to tip over to

either side but whichever side you're

tipping over to don't lose focus of the

who give him insight and lastly simplify

demystify it for the who so that he

knows why he is the who and why all this

talk I did I really choose governance at

all because I believe and now I've seen

it too that governance if done well can

lead to many beautiful outcomes one of

them being providing a home of their own

up Nagar to millions of deserving

rural families thank you very much

[Applause]