Half of India’s youth clubs exist only on paper

More than half of the youth clubs which got funds worth crores of rupees from the Central government in last few years were non-existent, the Youth Affairs ministry has found. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 10, 2011, 01:38:14 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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More than half of the youth clubs which got funds worth crores of rupees from the Central government in last few years were non-existent, the Youth Affairs ministry has found.

The bungling has surfaced at the time when the government agreed for a joint Lokpal Bill committee following massive youth support to Anna Hazare to fight corruption.

The government had allocated Rs 9,000 each as a special grant for conducting special activities to the three lakh registered youth clubs under the Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan (NYKS). Apart from it, the ministry gives up to Rs 50 crore every year to youth clubs to conduct different activities.

These clubs are the Central government's key arm to reach the masses in villages and the money was given for enrolling new members and widening scope of the clubs' activities. "These clubs were also required to conduct local sporting and cultural activities at the village level," a senior ministry official said.

On paper all looked fine till the ministry decided to find out the efficacy of the programmes being run by the sangathan through a national survey. To its dismay, it found that 1,75,000 clubs did not exist at the village level.

"The addresses of some of these clubs did not exist, its members had never participated in the youth club activity and most of them were running from rented accommodation," the official said. "The money gone waste may be a few hundred crore of rupees."

In a few states like Bihar, some youth clubs were registered at the properties of known criminals, which shut shop immediately after receiving money. The money was transferred into the accounts of the clubs, which in many cases have been found to be closed.

As the first corrective measure, Youth Affairs minister Ajay Maken said all details about youth clubs will be put up on the ministry's website and district offices for people to give us feedback. "Even telephone numbers of the youth clubs members and money given to them will be public domain," he said.

To revive some of the inactive clubs, the ministry has decided to designate 10,000 best clubs as mentor clubs, who would also be accountable for their activities and the money they receive. "There will be accountability at each level," Maken said.

Getting money from the Central government will become little more tedious. The ministry is also looking at the possibility of introducing bio-metric system for release of Rs 2,500 as monthly honorarium to youth volunteers in each district.

"We have also allocated a unique identification number to each club even before the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority of India) can do it," said ministry's youth affairs in-charge and joint secretary Shailesh, who uses only by his first name.

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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