Tribal plan to get better and bigger from next year

India’s development plan for Naxal affected areas will get bigger and better with coverage of all tribal areas from the next financial year.

Updated on: May 16, 2011, 19:38:30 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

India’s development plan for Naxal affected areas will get bigger and better with coverage of all tribal areas from the next financial year.

The Planning Commission has decided to initiate a Central India tribal development plan covering tribal areas from Gujarat to West Bengal and from Bihar till Andhra Pradesh and will include all existing tribal developmental schemes.

“The plan will cover all those areas where naxals have influence or can have influence in future because of the development deficit as desired by the Prime Minister,” said a senior plan panel official, adding around 120 districts will come under its purview.

The Union Cabinet in 2010 had approved an Integrated Action Plan (IAP) of Rs 3,500 crore for 60 naxal affected districts providing money to each of these districts to carry out development works not covered under existing Central government schemes. Each district was supposed to get Rs 25 crore in 2009-10 and Rs 30 crore in 2010-11.

The plan panel officials said, from next April, also the first year of the 12th five year plan, the IAP will get subsumed in the new tribal development plan having a twin objective of bridging development deficit with improvement in overall governance in tribal belt of India.

With it, several other schemes in tribal areas such as food nutrition scheme for KBK (Koraput, Bolangir and Kalahandi) districts will be part of the new plan to bring better focus.

Money will be provided to each district for strengthening the village bodies (gram sabhas) to take a decision on what types of developmental works they want to carry out just like other Panchayati Raj institutions in rest of the rural India. “Tribals’ participation in carrying out development works will become a must,” a plan panel functionary said, point out that the plan will have several elements of inclusiveness.

In the first two years, uniform money will flow to all districts for empowering gram sabhas including appointment of panchayat secretaries and thereafter, the fund release would be conditional. Only those districts that meet conditions for fund release in first two years will continue to get money for development, the functionary said.

To ensure third party monitoring of the development work, the panel wants to periodic inspection by a committee having civil society members and officials. Social audit on the utilization of the money similar to the one in National Rural Employment Gurantee Programme would also be another provision of the new plan.

The financial aspects of the plan are yet to be finalized.

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

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.