Special package for minorities ready

The Task Force, appointed by the PM, has recommended a special scholarship, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Jun 11, 2007, 23:40:52 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Minorities in 380 towns and cities are all set to get a special package from the government, months after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured of ‘fair share’ in government resources to them.

The Task Force appointed by the PM to suggest a road map for improving socio-economic condition of minorities has recommended a special scholarship for economically backward minorities, similar to the one for OBCs, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. The scholarships would be given on basis of a mean test (annual income of the family) to the students from these communities.

Most of the recommendations related to minorities in the working group of education have been included in the recommendations, a task force member said. It includes recommendations like upgrading madarsas (religious schools) and reservation for backwards among minorities in education institutions run by minority organizations.

The task force headed by Planning Commission member Balchandra Mungerkar has also recommended building of new schools and hostels for minorities and girl students from these communities. The HRD ministry has proposed opening of 1,500 new schools in these identified towns and cities.

The task force wants improvement in Muslim enrolment in higher education, which is just eight per cent. The number of Muslim graduates is only 1.8 per cent of the total graduates. Each university should have a special cell for minorities, the task force has suggested. The University Grants Commission will soon submit a detailed plan to tackle the problem of poor representation of minorities in higher education, a member said.

To improve overall hygienic condition, the task force want special allocation for minority-dominated areas in UPA government’s flagship schemes like National Rural Health Mission and National Urban Renewal Mission. “Special allocation for construction of roads and health centers should be made from the available funds,” a member said, adding that the allocation so far has not been adequate. Municipal bodies should be instructed to carry out special development drives, he added.

The task force, which has secretaries of six ministries as members, wants special financial incentives for them to start business or set up industries. The task force has recommended special schemes for these 383 towns and districts.

Specific recommendations on improving employment rate among minorities have also been made. The National Sample Survey Organisation had recently stated that employment rate among Christians was lowest among all religious groups, resulting in a demand for reservation by Christian groups.

chetan@hindustantimes.com.

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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