CHACHRAN SHARIF: Shafia Bibi, 41, has never voted in her entire life. But times have changed; it`s time for her to pay off a debt. A resident of a village, Basti-i-Sa`adat, on the east bank of the mighty Indus that separates Chachran Sharif from Kot Mithan, she is determined to get out of her home on May 11 to vote for the Pakistan Peoples Party for giving her a monthly cash grant of Rs1,000 under its flagship national social safety net initiative, Benazir Income Support Programme (BISP).

`I have been getting Rs3,000 every three months for the past 15 months, which helps my family pull through,` Shafia Bibi, covered from head to toe in what is referred to as a shuttlecock burqa in this part of the world, tells Dawn. Given that her husband, a daily wage earner, earnsless than Rs3,000 a month, the cash grant she gets under BISP means a lot to the mother of two daughters with disabilities. If nothing else, it has become easier for her to borrow little amounts from their relatives and neighbours in times of dire need. The creditors know that their `capacity to repay on time` has improved.

`You cannot imagine what these quarterly payments mean for people like us,` Shafia`s husband adds. The extra money her wife gets under BISP is spent mainly on food and medicines for children.

Miles away in Jajja Abbasian village, Fateh Mohammad will also vote for the PPP man Makhdoom Syed Shahabuddin for similar reasons: his wife is one among the thousands of recipients of the grant inKhanpur. A PPP old-timer, it is important for people like him to reelect the PPP for the continuation of cash payments because the programme may be rolled back if the party is defeated in the election.

The PPP candidates are depending a great deal on the goodwill BISP has created for their party amongst the voters from the poverty-stricken south Punjab. PPP leader Qamaruz Zaman Kaira believes the poor who have been getting financial help under BISP will support the PPP.

`Certainly, the areas with higher incidence of poverty, such as south Punjab and the interior of Sindh, have more BISP beneficiaries and it will have an impact on the outcome of election there,` he says.

There are also many who are unhappy with the PPP because theyare still not getting the stipend. In Basti-i-Saadat, for example, Shafia Bibi is the only woman getting the stipend. There are at least 10 others who qualify for support and deposited the forms a year ago but aren`t getting any stipend. `We are waiting to hear from the government,` complains Shamshad Bibi as her son shows Dawn official acknowledgement receipts for 10 forms. `We will not vote (for the PPP).

BISP features prominently in the PPP`s election campaign in the print and the electronic media with party chairman Bilawal Zardari-Bhutto promising to double the monthly stipend if the party is re-elected. Its candidates, too, do not forget to remind their voters of the difference the little cash grants have brought in their lives and promise to increasethe amount if their party is re-elected. `We are getting a lot of support from the beneficiaries of our antipoverty programme,` claims the PPP`s Waqas Naveed Gorchani, who is facing Shahbaz Sharif for a provincial assembly seat from Jampur, a tehsil of Rajanpur. `It sure is going to make a lot of difference on the election results,` he insists, saying there are about 25,000 recipients of BISP cash grants in his constituency.

The programme has in the last four years distributed more than Rs130 billion amongst five million ultra-poor families. The selection of the recipients was made on the basis of the results of a nationwide poverty survey of 27 million households. It had identified over seven million ultra-poor families eligible for the support. The government has promised to disburse the grant with arrears to the eligible families still not receiving the stipend owing to shortage of funds or any other reason.The rivals, nevertheless, dismiss the talk of BISP impact on election outcome in favour of the PPP as blown out of proportion. `The voters realize that the PPP government has taken away more in the shape of higher food and fuel prices than the meager amount it has given them under the income support scheme. The PPP can`t dupe them into voting for its candidates,` con-tends Shah Mehmood Qureshi, the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf leader contesting against a son of Yousuf Raza Gilani from one of the two national seats he is running for in Multan.

In Muzaffargarh, Mohammad Shafique, who owns a roadside tea stall, does not agree that all the women benefiting from BISP will vote for the PPP. `Who says so? Do you think my wife, who has been getting a stipend for two years now, will vote of her own accord? No. She will vote for the candidate I will tell her to. And I will not vote for the PPP,` he says.

Analysts also warn against overestimating the potential impact of BISP on the outcome of the elec-tion. `How many of them will actually get out of their homes to vote will largely depend on the ability of the candidates to transport them to the polling stations since an overwhelming majority of the cash support recipients live in remoter, poverty-stricken rural areas of Pakistan. Hence the possible impact of the programme on electoral outcome will vary from constituency to constituency and candidate to candidate,` argues a Karachi-based analyst, who is bound by his professional contract to not publicly speak about BISP on which he has extensively worked on.

A majority of the poor getting cash grants could already be PPPvoters. In that case, BISP will help the party only to the extent of `retaining` its support base in that segment of voters rather than winning new supporters.

The analyst quoted above, nevertheless, points out that many women receiving the cash stipend did not have national identity cards before applying for the BISP assistance. It means that there is a big likelihood that these women had never voted in the past. `This segment of `new voters` is culturally, socially and economically different from the segment of new voters Imran Khan`s PTI talks about, urban youth. Which way will it swing is hard to tell as yet.

Still a majority of them could sup-port the PPP,` he says.

Finally, he says, the BISP beneficiaries have the potential of influencing the close races. `It is irrational to assume the BISP beneficiaries can impact election in a constituency to the extent of leading a candidate or a party to the victory stand. The BISP vote is incrementally important but it cannot save a candidate or party that has lost public support from defeat,` he says.

Launched in 2008 through an act of parliament, the country`s first large-scale cash transfer initiative has won praise from international lenders like the World Bank for being one of the most transparent and effective anti-poverty programmes. This hasn`t prevented the critics of the PPP from alleging BISP is being used by the party leadership to `buy support for the party`s re-election`.

PTI leader Imran Khan is reported to have dubbed the scheme as no more than a scam to buy votes and the PML-N has pledged to reform it and rename it on coming to power.

Faisal Bari, professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, warns against maligning BISP just because it carries the name of the slain PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.

He does not see any logic in the argument that the government has used the programme to buy votes.`If the argument is that cash grants are being given to the PPP supporters alone, then the scheme has no more power than retaining their support. If the argument is that the stipend is being given to those who aren`t supporters of the PPP, then the amount of the grant is too little to buy their votes.

He says BISP was launched because the government realized that the people living in extreme poverty needed its help to cope with the economic pressures.

Parliament unanimously passed the BISP bill because all the parties felt the need for helping the poor, and it will be a pity if we lose this national institution to political wrangling, he says.