No roads lead into Naxal-affected areas

An internal review by the Planning Commission has revealed that the country’s worst developed districts include its most Naxal-hit ones.

Updated on: May 10, 2010, 23:39:24 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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An internal review by the Planning Commission has revealed that the country’s worst developed districts include its most Naxal-hit ones.

For instance, among the 34 affected districts being monitored by the panel with the help of National Informatics Centre, Dantewada, has the poorest record on road connectivity.
Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, which faced a spate of Naxal attacks recently, also has half the number of vocational training institutes as compared to districts not in the Naxal belt.

“Road connectivity is a big issue in Naxal-affected districts,” panel member secretary Sudha Pillai said. The government also faces a problem deploying officials in these districts.
The panel has also found that officials appointed to develop villages in these districts, work out of the district headquarters.

The commission found that Bihar has spent 26.53% of the allocated funds under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), while Maharashtra has spent (40.23%), Andhra Pradesh (43.21%) and Orissa (47.40%).

Under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana Chhattisgarh has spent 43.80 % of funds as against 87.14 % spent by Jharkhand and 51.50 % by Orissa. Madhya Pradesh has spent 38.81 % and Andhra Pradesh has spent 66.86%.

To overcome these problems, the commission plans to unfurl the Integrated Action Plan, which seeks to speed the process of developmental gaps in the 34 districts spanning eight states, including early implementation of the inclusive programmes of the Centre.

“We are trying to convince the states to focus on these areas . We are keen to have real-time feedback on the status of expenditure of the centrally-funded programmes,” she said.

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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