KOLKATA: `A small exposure’ of Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) survey about new “entrants in BPL lists in the metropolis’’ has ended up exploding the myth about Bharat Nirman advertisements now being shown in several TV channels, especially in Prashar Bharati channels both on `developments in urban and rural areas.’
Interestingly, though the survey has been a routine exercise every year, but it was noted that not only there’s a trend of growing number of neo-BPL class in Kolkata, but more damagingly it said about “25 to 30 percent new entrants in BPL lists’’ often could not be traced when survey team wanted to trace them.
Though the outcome of the survey was alarming enough for lower middle-class sections belonging to different professions and often jobless over years which gradually pushed the middle-class in neo-BPL list, but it did not produce any immediate reactions from political camps whether Left or Right, but noted economists and sociologists feel “it’s an apparent outcome of jobless growth and socio-economically security-less society which may have left a far bigger message for national.
“These are the only initial symptoms of a reform-driven employment policies of the UPA -I and UPA II, jobless growth and may have hit the other bigger state capitals in the nation,’’ said a professor of economics professor of Calcutta University on the conditions of anonymity.
“But you would be surprised that these neo-BPL entrants may not at the end get, despite being jobless or in poverty, all the benefits entitled for BPL families,’’ said another professor of sociology, adding, “for reasons as vague as mere Government wish!’’
KMC officials however said that “the people who could not manage a living in the city are returning to rural areas “which is why we often cannot trace them back when we look for them for more details.’’ However, they are silent about no “new generation of proper jobs and horror of inflation inflicted bleeding empty pockets.’’
“This happens to be a routine exercise why it should be taken so seriously?’’ countered a senior CPI leader.
“It happens, after all we aren’t a socialist economy and have no official plans for family planning so such number will go up and go down at times, so where’s any surprise? Asked a Congress leader who felt that after all Bharat Nirman adds aren’t all about without factual errors.
Similarly, the reactions from TMC wasn’t either very encouraging either for neo-BPLs, “We do not hold briefs for Congress-led UPA II’s policies which created such a phenomenon as you called neo-BPL families,’’ said a ruling party leader also a MLA.
However, after the exposure, the noted economists and sociologists would not look at the emerging problem so lightly: “It proved after all present India is not all about ATMs, metro rails, neo-rich, highways, mobiles and airports, we fear that this phenomenon may have already hit us nationally and triggered a dangerous trend of reverse migration of people from cities to villages which happened few years back in China which gagged the news with lots of efforts,’’ said a Calcutta University professor.

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