Bihar caste survey: People staying in joint families want them listed as separate family units for govt doles

PATNA: Bihar’s caste-based survey has kindled expectations, especially among the rural masses, much beyond what it actually aims to achieve.

Anticipating government doles in terms of ration through the public distribution system (PDS), an Indira Awaas, or even medical benefit through Ayushman Bharat, many in joint families have complained that they be shown as separate families, instead of a unified unit, said government officials.

“We received many complaints, mostly from men staying in joint families, pleading that they be registered in the survey as separate families within the same household,” said Mahesh Prasad, Patna’s district statistical officer and also its additional principal census officer.

“These men said they were away at work when the enumerator visited their household during the day, and the women folk in their household the enumerators spoke to, got confused, and listed all the extended family members in the house as one family unit,” he added.

“When our officials tried to convince the complainants that showing them as one or separate family units will not make any difference, they expressed apprehensions of being deprived of government benefits in the future,” said Prasad.

Anticipating that the survey data would be used to settle title issues in the future, a few children estranged from their parents, insisted that they be shown in the same household as their father, despite them not staying together.

“Such people apprehended that they would forfeit their claim to their father’s property if they were not registered in the same household,” said another official of the Patna district administration.

Hoping to reap dual benefits of PDS foodgrains, there were around 20 families at Patlapur panchayat in Patna’s Danapur sub-division, bordering Dighwara block in Saran district, who wanted their names registered both in Patna and Saran districts, said yet another official of the Patna district administration.

Their contention was that the unsurveyed land in the diara (a chunk of land created in the middle of the river Ganges as a result of the deposition of sands over the decades), came under the administrative jurisdiction of Patna, but the name of the residents was in the voter list of Dighwara block in Saran, the third official said.

When the villagers stood their ground, the sub-divisional officers of Patna and Saran, along with the circle officer and block development officer as well as the district statistical officer of Patna visited the area and bifurcated them, with 12 families listed in the enumeration list of Patna and eight in Saran. The bifurcation, said officials, was done on the basis of the ward, which is the smallest unit of the caste-based survey.

While many complaints were flimsy, there were some genuine too.

Shahi Bhushan Rai, 55, a self-employed person, in Patna’s Vyasnagar locality of Magistrate Colony said though his household had been marked, the enumerator did not come to ask for family details, including the name of the head of the family, the number of people residing in the family and if it was a single-family unit residing there.

Bimal Swaroop, 66, a retired government official, said no enumerator came to the Deoki Nandan Apartment in Magistrate Colony, where he resided.

Raman Kumar and Rashmi Kumar, residents of 702, Maa Bhagwati Apartment on Boring Road, alleged that though the enumerator visited other flats in their apartment, they did not visit theirs.

Amita Swaroop, 55, a school teacher, said no enumerator had come to the Sanvi Ashram Apartment, having 12 residential flats in Magistrate Colony.

As many as 14,35,269 families against a projected 20 lakh in Patna had been surveyed till January 21, said officials. The projection of 20 lakh families in Patna was based on the seventh economic census data of Patna in 2020.

Patna’s district magistrate, Chandra Shekhar Singh, had asked people left out during the first phase of the survey from January 7 to 21, to call up its control room (0612-2504112) and register their complaints so that they could be counted, and their households marked by the enumerators before Wednesday.

Over 200 calls were received on Patna’s helpline number, of which nearly one-fourth the calls received pertained to other districts, said officials

Efforts to reach Singh for comments proved futile, as he did not respond to calls or text messages.

All 38 districts of Bihar had to collate and verify data compiled through over 3.5 lakh government employees, and submit it to the General Administration Department, which is driving the survey, on Wednesday.

The survey is targeting around 13 crore (approx) people in 3 crore households in Bihar.