Chapter 8: In conclusion: rural households of Assam require continuous food based interventions provides a commentary on the role and significance of food based welfare
5.1 HOUSEHOLD CHARACTERISTICS BY TYPE OF RATION CARD
is the analysis of the coverage of TPDS programme in the two villages based on the size of operational holdings of the households and occupation of the head of the households. This section also discusses how income targeting has failed with the example of MMASY scheme. Section 5.3 contains discussion on targeting errors in the studied villages. Inclusion and exclusion of beneficiaries based on NFSA 2013 is also discussed. Section 5.4 outlines the pattern of inclusion and exclusion of households in TPDS based on the estimates of NSSO 61st quinquennial round report in rural Assam. This section shows that large proportion of households in the state is excluded from TPDS and the village data further validates the NSSO findings. Section 5.5 concludes the chapter.
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Kumargaon village 33.4 per cent are AAY households, 19.8 per cent BPL households, 17 per cent MMASY households, 15.4 per cent APL households and 11.7 per cent are households without any ration cards.
Table 5.1 Household characteristics by type of ration cards in Chaudhurirchar and Kumargaon
Chaudhurirchar Kumargaon
APL BPL AAY MMASY No card APL BPL AAY MMASY No card
Total number of
households 25 44 20 20 18 19 23 37 19 13
Proportion of
households 19.7 34.6 15.7 15.7 14.2 15.4 19.8 33.4 17 11.7
Average household
size 5 5 4 7 4 5 5 4 4 4
Average size of total
land owned (in acre) 2.3 0.6 0.4 1.5 0.3 2.2 0.7 1.6 0.7 1.5 Access to proper
sanitation 83 63 50 73 50 25 40 50 86 75
Average MPCE 1558 879 528 1544 1021 2264 1607 1592 2075 2578 Average
MPCE_food 857 554 278 735 703 1000 922 629 1132 1199
Average MPCE_non
food 700 325 249 809 318 1264 685 963 943 1379
Avg_MPCE_cereal 367 210 106 335 298 272 238 156 284 273
Avg_MPCE_non-
cereal 487 342 170 397 402 726 681 471 846 923
Share_Expnd_House
repairing 21 14 10 20 7 14 28 19 28 15
Share_Expnd_Health 21 20 34 19 42 35 20 25 10 19
Share_Expnd_Edn 9 11 10 12 0 7 3 11 7 5
Share_Expnd_Trans 9 9 13 6 4 9 4 4 8 7
Source: Survey data, 2015
Note: In Kumargaon village, among APL households 2 households have both APL and MMASY cards and among BPL households 1 BPL household has both BPL and MMASY cards. These households are also referred as ‗multiple card holders‘ households while analyzing the data. As the proportion of such types of households is very small (2.7%), therefore no separate category has been made in this table. The results of the first 5 indicators are based on the complete enumeration and results of the rest of the indicators are based on the sample survey.
The average size of AAY and households without any ration cards are lesser than that of the other households in Chaudhurirchar village. Similarly in Kumargaon village AAY, MMASY
and households without any ration cards has the similar as well as the lowest household size.
In Chaudhurirchar village, the total land holding size shows that AAY households are the poorest households among the cardholder households. Similarly, the BPL and households without any ration cards are also land –poor households. APL and MMASY households are comparatively better off households. In Kumargaon village, BPL and MMASY households have the lowest landholding size whereas APL and households without any cards are comparatively better off households. However, the AAY households shows a different picture, the reason behind is that the average size of leased-in land is higher than average size of own and self-cultivated land and that is also influenced by the extreme values as some of the AAY households leased-in very high size of cultivable land as compared to other households.
Average MPCE is high for all households in Kumargaon village as compared to Chaudhurirchar village. In Chaudhurirchar village, average MPCE of APL households is highest followed by MMASY and household without any cards. AAY households have the lowest MPCE followed by BPL households. In Kumargaon village, households without any ration cards have the highest MPCE followed by the APL and MMASY households and AAY households has the lowest MPCE and BPL households has the second lowest MPCE.
Further, average MPCE on food is highest for APL households and lowest for AAY households. In Kumargaon village the average MPCE on food is not much different among APL, MMASY and households without any ration cards and it is lowest among AAY households. These figures are almost similar in Kumargaon village too. Average MPCE_food is further divided into average MPCE of cereal and average MPCE non cereal.
In Chaudhurirchar village, the average MPCE cereal and average MPCE non cereal has the similar pattern as average MPCE_food. This has too similar pattern in Kumargaon village.
However, all these food expenditure indicators show that AAY households have the lowest
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expenditure followed by BPL households. This shows that both these group of households are the poorest households in both the villages.
The non-food expenditure shows that in Chaudhurirchar village average MPCE on non- food is the highest for MMASY and APL households and lowest for AAY households, followed by BPL households. In Kumargaon village, average MPCE on non-food is highest for those households without any ration cards followed by APL households. BPL households have lowest average MPCE on non-food items. AAY households have average non-food expenditure is larger than MMASY households. However the detail figure shows that this is because of higher expenditure on other types of non-food essential such as house repairing, health and education for theses households as compared to other households. In both the villages, health expenditure is very high among the AAY households.
Thus it is evident that between the two villages Kumargaon village is comparatively better off than Chaudhurirchar village. Also in both the villages, AAY and BPL households are the poorest households. Though the APL and MMASY household are comparatively better than AAY and BPL households, they cannot be claimed as completely well off households because of very high expenditure on home repairing, health, transportation and education.
Further section 5.3 shows that very few households are regular salaried income earning households in both the villages. Moreover, in both the villages, large numbers of population are out of labour force as explained in chapter 3.