Arun Jaitley's budget for 2014-15 'ignores' plight of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes: NCDHR

The National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) has said the Union budget for 2014-15 has brought “no significant policy for inclusive and equitable growth as promised by the Modi Government.” Saying that it has “belied the expectations of Dalits and Adivasis”, an NCDHR statement said, “The Union Budget 2014-15 should have allocated Plan funds under the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP) and the Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) in proportion to the population shares of SCs (16.8 percent) and STs (8.7 percent). However, the allocation is Rs 50,548.16 crore (8.79 percent) for SCs and Rs 32,386.84 crore (5. 63 percent) for STs.”
The statement stated, “The funds earmarked under SCSP and TSP should have projects and interventions meant exclusively for SCs and STs. However, this year the SCSP and TSP have to bear the burden of partly funding the the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGS), a wage-based programme, too. So, when we deduct the amount allocated to MNREGS from the SCSP then the total allocation decreases to Rs 43,208.08 crore, which is 7.51 percent; similarly, when we deduct the amount from the TSP, the amount reduces to Rs 26,714.96 crore, which is 4.64 percent.”

Giving more details, the statement said, “The budget has a shortfall of Rs 49,941 crore to the SCSP and Rs 20,435.04 crore to the TSP, while last year the shortfall stood at Rs 48,401 crore to the SCSP and Rs 20,938 crore to the TSP.” It added, “The budget is no different from earlier exercises so far as Dalits and Adivasis are concerned. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has made an allocation of Rs 82,935crore for the ‘welfare’ of SCs and STs, who together constitute more than 25 per cent of India's population. The overall economic development of the Dalits and Adivasis is expected to be taken care of by this outlay, but it is not a fair share.”
Paul Divakar, general secretary, NCDHR, comments, “The common thread running through all the Budgets tabled since Independence is the exclusion of Dalits and Adivasis, and the Union Government failing to make population proportionate allocation for the SCs and STs. The budget has bypassed the development needs of the Dalits and Adivasis. It will have a damaging impact on Dalits and Adivasis as the underlying assumption is that it is ‘fair’ and reasonable to expect all Indians to share equally the burden of budget cuts and increased costs.”

The statement recalled, “The NDA manifesto promised concrete actions for SCs and STs by boosting education, housing, health, skill development, entrepreneurship, poverty eradication, efficient utilization of development funds with special focus on the girl child. However, the budget has ignored certain schemes meant for Dalit and Adivasi girls, especially in education. For instance, the National Scheme for Incentive to Girl Child for Secondary Education, schemes for construction and running of girls’ hostels, etc.”
“Conceptualized in the 1970s by the Planning Commission, the two plans, SCSP and TSP are aimed at channeling Plan funds for the development of SCs and STs, in accordance with the proportion of SCs and STs in the total population. But even after three decades since these strategies were introduced, a scrutiny of the budgetary resources earmarked for SCs and STs raises serious concerns”, the statement said, adding, "Besides diversion of funds, the other reasons for the SCSP/TSP failure are inadequate allocation of funds proportionate to the SC/ST population, poor identification of schemes and faulty service delivery system.”

Comments

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

Powering pollution, heating homes: Why are Delhi residents opposing incineration-based waste management

While going through the 50-odd-page report Burning Waste, Warming Cities? Waste-to-Energy (WTE) Incineration and Urban Heat in Delhi , authored by Chythenyen Devika Kulasekaran of the well-known advocacy group Centre for Financial Accountability, I came across a reference to Sukhdev Vihar — a place where I lived for almost a decade before moving to Moscow in 1986 as the foreign correspondent of the daily Patriot and weekly Link .

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

Dalit rights and political tensions: Why is Mevani at odds with Congress leadership?

While I have known Jignesh Mevani, one of the dozen-odd Congress MLAs from Gujarat, ever since my Gandhinagar days—when he was a young activist aligned with well-known human rights lawyer Mukul Sinha’s organisation, Jan Sangharsh Manch—he became famous following the July 2016 Una Dalit atrocity, in which seven members of a family were brutally assaulted by self-proclaimed cow vigilantes while skinning a dead cow, a traditional occupation among Dalits.

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

Boeing 787 under scrutiny again after Ahmedabad crash: Whistleblower warnings resurface

A heart-wrenching tragedy has taken place in Ahmedabad. As widely reported, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner plane crashed shortly after taking off from the city’s airport, currently operated by India’s top tycoon, Gautam Adani. The aircraft was carrying 230 passengers and 12 crew members. As expected, the crash has led to an outpouring of grief across the country. At the same time, there have been demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Venkaiah Naidu. The most striking comment came from BJP MP Subramanian Swamy, who stated : "When a train derailed in the 1950s, Lal Bahadur Shastri resigned. On the same morality, I demand PM Modi, HM Amit Shah, and Civil Aviation Minister Naidu resign so that a free and fair inquiry can be held. All that Modi and his associates have been doing so far is gallivanting, which must stop." Amidst widespread mourning, some fringe elements sought to communalize the tragedy. One post ...

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

Search This Blog