Saturday, November 5, 2011

NAC rules for Montek on poverty plans

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111105/jsp/frontpage/story_14711569.jsp
NAC rules for Montek on poverty plans

New Delhi, Nov. 4: The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council has listed dos and don'ts for Montek Singh Ahluwalia on the special component plan that forms a part of the five-year plan devised by the Planning Commission.

The council has focused on the Dalits in the special plan that has two sub-plans: one for Dalits and the other for tribals.

The council's working group on Dalit issues — Harsh Mander and Farah Naqvi are in the team — has asked the Centre to pass an enabling law to monitor the schemes undertaken by the special Dalit plan, track the amounts spent on them to the last rupee and facilitate social auditing.

The council asked the plan panel to fund only such schemes where "tangible benefits" accrued to the Dalits and demanded that the money allotted should be made "non-lapsable and non-divertible".

Explaining the rationale for the last demand, the council said before the plan outlays were allocated to the ministries and departments in the Centre and the states, the commission must compulsorily earmark a proportion for the Dalit sub-plan.

Mander and Naqvi underlined that the designated amount must not be parked with a ministry but must be handed out to all the departments and ministries that had a proven record of doing targetted programmes for the Schedules Castes.

They added that if the Planning Commission was to achieve the 12th Plan's declared aim of "closing the gap between the SCs and the rest" through the SC sub-plan — introduced in the late seventies — it should ensure that the Dalit-specific projects were "protected" and indeed funded even more.

"The practice of showing notional outflows by ministries/departments to account for the special component sub-plan shall be discontinued," it stressed.

The NAC has asked to constitute a separate body to vet and sanction the schemes.

Sonia's panel, in concrete terms, said boarding schools for Dalit boys and girls must be set up in villages, towns and cities.

The council also demanded programmes to allow Dalits greater access to irrigated land, create self-employment schemes and enterprise development.

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