'Cabinet plan for Naxal areas retrogressive'

The Planning Commission has termed the Union Cabinet's decision on Integrated Action Plan as "deeply retrogressive" saying that by allowing the district-level committees to utilise development funds, the common man was being excluded.

Updated on: Jan 12, 2011, 24:38:02 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission has termed the Union Cabinet's decision on Integrated Action Plan as "deeply retrogressive" saying that by allowing the district-level committees to utilise development funds, the common man was being excluded.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) on November 24, 2011, had decided that a committee of district collector, superintendent of police and district forest officer (DFO) will utilise Rs25 crore and Rs30 crore for 2010-11 and 2011-12, respectively, in the 60 Naxal-affected districts of the country.

Difference of opinion

On how Rs3,300crore will be spent over 2 years
CCEA: A committee of district collector, SP and district forest officer will utilise the fund in 60 tribal and backward districts.
Plan panel: Wants people participation in money utilisation, not leaving it at discretion of officials
Bridging trust deficit
CCEA: Committee will have flexibility to spend amount in areas where there aren’t enough funds
Plan panel: No direct role of people will aggravate sense of exclusion among tribals

On monitoring the plan
CCEA: At state level, development commissioner will monitor utilisation of funds and at national level, the Planning Commission
Plan panel: No use, as none of our recommendations such as incentivising implementation of Forest Rights Act, Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act and strengthening of Panchayati Raj Institutions have been accepted.

The committee had rejected the commission's proposal that Rs13,000 crore should be used for development work after strengthening the local panchayati raj institutions (PRIs) in consultation with civil society members.

The home ministry and Prime Minister's Office (PMO) too had opposed the proposal saying it was not viable. Later, home minister P Chidambaram had said that since the PRIs were defunct in many districts, accepting the commission's suggestion was difficult.

In a note submitted to the PMO, the commission went to the extent of suggesting that the scheme should be handed over to the home ministry or any other department deemed suitable as none of its recommendations were accepted.

The note prepared by plan panel member Mihir Shah and endorsed by deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia reportedly says that providing equal amount of money to all districts irrespective of size and need (poverty and tribal population) makes no sense.

The commission has also doubted whether the district administration will be able to utilize the funds fully as its internal analysis showed poor analysis of funds under its existing flagship programmes.

"A materialistic approach to the tribal issue will only aggravate the situation and risk it getting completely out of hand," sources in the commission said.

The note also said that people in these areas were experiencing a deep sense of exclusion and CCEA's decision had re-inforced the feeling.

The commission has asked PMO to consider a conflict resolution mechanism as adopted by the World Bank, where an independent ombudsman is appointed to resolve grievances.

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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