MPs force govt to change rule on innovation

Members of Parliament (MPs) have forced the Centre to end the state government's role in awarding innovations in their parliamentary constituencies. They have successfully pushed for having a say in deciding who will get the award. Chetan Chauhan reports. Bone of contention

Updated on: Sep 24, 2012, 24:56:23 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Members of Parliament (MPs) have forced the Centre to end the state government's role in awarding innovations in their parliamentary constituencies. They have successfully pushed for having a say in deciding who will get the award.

In May this year, the ministry of statistics and programme implementation (MOSPI) introduced a scheme "MP-one idea" to promote a "grassroot bottom up" approach to innovation, and to arrive at solutions for local problems through awarding three best innovations to each of the country's 790 MPs. The scheme was suggested by the National Innovation Council, headed by Sam Pitroda.

The ministry allowed the MPs to allocate Rs. 5 lakh from their local area development fund (MPLAD) of Rs. 5 crore every year for the awards.

The ministry's guidelines, however, imposed a condition that the state governments will be the final deciding authority, becoming a bone of contention with the MPs.

Furious, the MPs wrote to the ministry - refusing to allocate funds to the scheme by saying they cannot become "subservient" to state governments. "Our independence will be lost," explained a senior Congress MP on the condition of anonymity.

Srikant Jena, minister for statistics and programme implementation, saw logic in their view and asked his ministry to change the guidelines.

"Giving power to the state government will cause unnecessary delay," he told HT.

The new rule issued this week incorporated the MPs' concerns and made the selection committee, to be headed by the district collector, as the deciding authority.

It also increased the role of MPs in selecting the best innovations in their constituencies. Under the new rules, the number of selection committee members has been increased from six to eight, with two more members representing civil society to be nominated by an MP. The other six members from the government and the academics field will be nominated by the district collector in consultation with the MP concerned.

The rule also provides for expenditure to hold a function with "adequate media coverage" under the tutelage of the MPs to give the awards in each parliamentary constituency.

"In order to ensure that the scheme would be able to foster a spirit of innovation and grass-root level competitiveness and spur the innovation movement in the country, the award function should be given wide publicity," the guidelines say.

The committee has been authorised to give cash awards of Rs. 2.5 lakh, Rs. 1.5 lakh and Rs. 1 lakh to three best innovations in the constituency.

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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