Homes, jobs for all in Naxal-hit states

The “priority development plan for Naxal-affected districts” has recommended that all eligible in these 55 districts will get homes under Indira Awas Yojana in the next three years, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jan 19, 2009, 24:52:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The “priority development plan for Naxal-affected districts” has recommended that all eligible in these 55 districts will get homes under Indira Awas Yojana in the next three years.

All villages will be covered under National Rural Guarantee Scheme and villagers will get land under the Forest Rights law and National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Policy, 2007.

In one of the biggest coordinated efforts to check Naxalism through socio-economic development, the government has decided to bring all 55 districts under National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, mid-day meal scheme, national nutrition mission, Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojana and national skill development mission on priority basis.

In a bid to ensure that the machinery functions effectively in these districts, the government has decided to increase administrative cost for 69 schemes from four per cent to ten per cent to provide security to officials. The home ministry has also been asked to provide money under its special assistance to check Naxal violence to this job, the official said.

The grand plan has a special people element wherein gram sabhas will have the right to conduct social audits of all schemes. This was decided after National Institute of Rural Development in a study of 64 villages in Naxal areas found that denial of rights over forests, distress over administrative failure and dissatisfaction over the failure of development was widespread among people.

So far, right to conduct social audit was allowed under National Rural Employement Gurantee Scheme, which has failed to effectively take-off in Naxal areas. “Special guidelines will be issued for capacity building of gram sabhas and allowing them to perform social audit of the schemes,” a rural development ministry official, said.

To ensure that the plan works, the government has set up an inter-ministerial group with representatives of all 20 Central government ministries to monitor its implementation, said a Planning Commission official, who was not willing to be named.

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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