Centre looks to youth to uplift rural regions

The government plans to use the power of Indian youth to enhance implementation of its social sector programmes in the rural sector.

Updated on: Jun 3, 2012, 23:42:49 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government plans to use the power of Indian youth to enhance implementation of its social sector programmes in the rural sector.

Taking a cue from the Prime Minister Rural Development Fellowship (PMRDF), which will post 158 youths in 78 naxal-affected districts, the Planning Commission is contemplating expansion of its scope to other social sector schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), Bharat Nirman and the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

A senior plan panel functionary told HT that it wants ministries to utilise the administrative cost available in each scheme to employ highly qualified fellows for coming up with out-of-the-box ideas for implementation of the schemes. However, caution must be exercised to ensure that they do not become piggy banks for district collectors, he added.

The rural development ministry will pay R75,000 per month to each of the fellows being deployed in the 78 naxal-affected districts.

“Good financial incentives will attract the best talent,” said a rural development ministry official, rebutting claims that their salaries could equal that of senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officials.

The fellowship encourages young professionals such as doctors, investment bankers and computer engineers to work in the poorest and most remote naxal-affected districts. “Their average age is 25 to 26 years, and they are full of new ideas for planning at the village-level,” a ministry official said.

To make the optimum use of young talent, Andhra Pradesh has decided to allocate R1 crore for utilisation in innovative projects suggested by the fellows. Other states have made suggestions of fellows a mandatory part of district planning.

The fellows will be required to produce monthly progress reports and an annual report on the progress of projects undertaken under the Integrated Action Plan in naxal-affected districts. After two years, they would be awarded a degree or diploma by the Mumbai-based Tata Institute for Social Sciences.

Flexibility to the state government, which is a paradigm shift that the Planning Commission suggests for

the 12th Plan, is key to the success of the fellowship programme. “They will be accountable to the district magistrate and not to us (the Centre),” the official said.

Stating that around 80 of the 156 fellows have already joined, a Planning Commission member said, “Villages in India don’t have planning skills. These young professionals can help bridge this deficit.”

The plan, which will be sent for the PM’s approval soon, will recommend expansion of the PMDRF to other schemes and utilisation of young educated Indians in rural sector reforms.

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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