Plan panel to scrap IAP from 2013-14

The Planning Commission’s decision to discontinue the Centre’s Integrated Action Plan (IAP) to bridge the development deficit in 82 naxal-affected districts from the next financial year is not likely to go down very well with the home ministry.

Updated on: Jul 28, 2012, 16:30:22 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The Planning Commission’s decision to discontinue the Centre’s Integrated Action Plan (IAP) to bridge the development deficit in 82 naxal-affected districts from the next financial year is not likely to go down very well with the home ministry.

The plan panel and the home ministry have been jointly responsible for the IAP since it was launched in 2010-11 as a development initiative in 35 worst-affected districts.

Planning Commission member in-charge of rural development Mihir Shah told HT, “There would be no IAP from the next financial year.”

According to the new plan, the central government will provide funds to naxal-affected districts under the revamped Backward Regions Grant Fund (BGRF), a flagship scheme for the overall development of 200 most socially and economically deprived districts of India. The BGRF was introduced in 2006, and was the only source of funding for naxal-affected areas before the IAP was introduced.

Lately, the IAP has come under criticism for its rapid expansion --- 82 districts from the initial 35 in less than two years --- and bureaucratic approach.

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh said recently that the three-member committee chaired by the district collector to select projects and implement them was not very effective. “There has been no active involvement of local elected representatives. Therefore the money does not get spend where it should be.”

Ramesh also said that treating all districts identically was problematic.

Any increase in funding under BRGF is unlikely as the plan panel believes that panchayats do not have capacity to absorb more than already allocated. “Unless the capacity is improved allocating more (funds) will be of no use,” another plan panel official said.

With the rural development and panchayati raj ministries on board with the new plan, official sources said the commission will be circulating a cabinet note on the matter soon.

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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