Aiyar slams UPA-I model for tribals

Former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday blamed the Central government’s development model for exploitation of tribals and accused UPA-1 of being callous towards empowerment of poor through Panchayati Raj bodies.

Updated on: Aug 13, 2010, 24:23:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Former Union Minister Mani Shankar Aiyar on Thursday blamed the Central government’s development model for exploitation of tribals and accused UPA-1 of being callous towards empowerment of poor through Panchayati Raj bodies.

“For five years as a Panchayati Raj minister I did not have an office,” Aiyar said at a conference on exploitation of tribals in Nyamgiri Hills in Orissa in the name of Posco Steel plant. “The (Panchayati Raj) ministry was housed in Samrat Hotel for which the government gave Rs 5 crore.”

Aiyar said no one listened to him on empowerment of panchayats in UPA-1.

“The Central government could have given direction to states to implement panchayati raj laws such as PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act) but the government was not willing to take the initiative.”

Aiyar further said the government was being run for 100 most rich people in India, who have one-fourth of the country’s wealth, and it went against the Congress slogan of “Congress ka haath aam adami ka saath” in presence of party general secretary Digvijay Singh.

Highly critical of present development model, Aiyar said, “tribals need azadi (freedom) from development” and described the present model as a “crime perpetuated” on the rural poor.

“I am shocked to read that the Centre believes that R14,000 crore through Integrated Action Plan can solve naxalism whereas it has given thousands of crores for plundering on Commonwealth Games.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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