Himachal government’s wonderful scheme to deal with people illegally claiming BPL benefits
So, if you are a family living below poverty line in Himachal Pradesh, in addition to income related requirements, you need to show your wealth status in the form of a huge signboard on the front wall of your house.
The logic given is that there are a lot of people who have somehow managed to bypass the system and they are claiming various BPL benefits provided by the government. The government plans to deal with the culpables by ‘naming and claiming’, which seems more like ‘naming and shaming’.
I clearly see it as a fault of the system which couldn’t have enough safeguards in place to protect its own schemes. They have now resorted to punish the very people themselves for whom the scheme was created.
The signboard which is marked in Hindi, literally translates to — “I am poor”, and goes on to give details about the family. So big, that you can’t even miss it. Naturally a lot of families decided to give away their status and the remaining ones are left with this board hanging in front of their houses.
Remember that dialogue from the famous hindi movie Deewar, where the protagonist, Amitabh Bachchan’s hand is tattooed with a statement that reads, “Mera baap chor hai”?
