By Pervez Bari, TwoCircles.net,
Bhopal: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Madhya Pradesh Government officials in utter disregard and insensitivity to the dignity of the have-nots are labeling their houses as “poor” or “very poor” in bold letters in an identification exercise in pursuance to a government scheme to extend some sort of help to the impoverished.
In keeping with the official apathy, the officials in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh are going about identifying poor households by splashing and painting bold lettered signs on the front doors of houses of the poor saying, “This Family Is Poor” or “This Family Is Too Poor.”
Madhya Pradesh Government branding poverty on the doors of the poor people
The poor, of course, have little choice. If they resist and ask that their poverty not be made a matter of town square “tamasha”, they will lose out on the few rupees that could be crucial to them.
According to a news website www.worldsikhnews.com in Narsinghpur town in Madhya Pradesh the administration has not even had second thoughts about parading the poverty on their front walls. The Narsinghpur administration had recently marked several homes in villages in the Karera and Tendukheda tehsils as “poor” and “very poor” in large, coloured letters.
The branding said ‘Yeh parivar garib hai’ in blue letters on a white background and ‘Yeh parivar ati garib hai’ in yellow letters on white, corresponding with the blue cards issued to BPL families, and yellow cards issued to the ‘poorest of the poor’ eligible for the “Antodaya Anna Yojana”.
According to the administration, the colour-coding was meant to ensure that the benefits of pro-poor schemes went only to those for whom they were meant — and it had hoped that being branded ‘poor’ would shame the rich into giving up their claim on resources not meant for them.
Such public humiliation of the poor has elicited little reaction from India’s civil society. The administration has neither shown a discerning nature nor has been sensitive while writing on people’s walls. Why, for example, was it not possible to mark out the beneficiaries by displaying lists of blue and yellow cardholders at every gram panchayat office?
Besides food-grains and kerosene supplied through PDS shops at highly subsidized rates, BPL cardholders are eligible for free medical facilities in government hospitals. ([email protected])