Law for entitlement schemes for people, says NAC

The National Advisory Council headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday decided that every law or scheme giving entitlements to people should have an autonomous grievance redressal mechanism. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 10, 2011, 22:41:57 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The National Advisory Council headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Monday decided that every law or scheme giving entitlements to people should have an autonomous grievance redressal mechanism.

There is no such mechanism under the Forest Rights Act, which recognizes rights of tribal and forest communities, and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), a scheme entitling maximum 100 days of employment in a year.

"The NAC decided that there should be some authority for grievance redressal in law and schemes providing entitlements," said NAC member N C Saxena.

The issue came up when the NAC was discussing an autonomous framework for people to complain, in case they don't get food, under the proposed National Food Security bill, whose concept note has already been submitted to the government.

There is a consensus on the format of the draft bill likely to be made public by mid January. The working group on the bill has been asked to come out with a more analytical note for further deliberations.

The NAC has also recommended that instead of institution based nutrition programme the Women and Child Development (WCD) ministry should focus on home based nutrition.

"Most of the malnutrition creeps into the child in first one year of birth. And, during this period it is difficult to bring a child to an Anganwadi center for food. Therefore, better would be to devise a programme to provide nutritious food at home," a NAC member said.

The NAC has also asked the WCD ministry to have a re-look at Protection of Women against Sexual Harassment at Workplace Bill, 2010 to bring domestic helps under its purview and deleting a provision for punishing those found guilty of a false complaint.

"Given the fear of reprisal, which routinely prevents women from coming forward to seek protection against sexual harassment at the work place, the safeguards provided to them by this Bill are weakened by the inclusion of Clause 14 (Punishment for false or malicious complaint and false evidence), which might deter victims from seeking protection of the proposed legislation," the NAC said in a statement.

The NAC also decided to seek comments of the ministry of Tribal Affairs and Environment ministry on poor implementation of the Forest Rights Act. A committee headed by Saxena had earlier this month found that community has been granted for only 20,000 hectares of land as against four crore hectares available.

"We have sent our recommendations on proposed changes in FRA rules and have sought comments of the two ministries," Saxena said.

The council has also suggested a sweeping change in world biggest child nutrition programme, Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) by asking the government to focus on children in six to 12 months age group, rather than in the age group of three to five years.

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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