To fight drought, job plan gets more funds

To fight one of the India’s worst droughts, the Union Govt decided a slew of measures including additional allocation of funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to provide employment for 200 days — instead of 100 — and direct relief to farmers from the National Calamity Fund, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 1, 2009, 24:44:45 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To fight one of the India’s worst droughts, the Union government on Monday decided a slew of measures including additional allocation of funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to provide employment for 200 days — instead of 100 — and direct relief to farmers from the National Calamity Fund (NCF).

The government has already provided Rs 39,100 crore (Rs 391 billion) for the world’s biggest social security scheme in the 2009-10 Budget.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) seems have decided that the guidelines for NCF and National Calamity Contingency Fund would be revised to allow the government to pay the additional agriculture input costs to farmers. It includes subsidy for diesel and electricity consumed for pumping underground water and alternative less water intensive crops.

“The funds from NCF would be released once the state government submits its proposals,” a government statement said.

The government has declared 272 of 616 districts as drought-hit, with India receiving 24 per cent less than average rainfall. If the trend continues, this can be the country’s worst drought in Independent India.

Maximum deficiency of 19 per cent for entire monsoon (June to September end) had been recorded in three years — 2002, 1987, 1979.

No wonder the CCEA has reportedly decided that the government will pay for digging up four lakh new borewells at a cost of Rs 600 crore (Rs 6 billion).

The farmers will get money from NCF for re-digging their existing borewells. About 300 MPs of the drought-hit districts have been asked to provide money from MP Local Area Fund (MPLAD) for water harvesting and re-digging of tubewells, the statement said. Each MP gets Rs two crore (Rs 20 million) every year under the MPLAD scheme.

State governments have been asked to utilise Rs 2,450 crore provided under Integrated Watershed Development Programme — a scheme for rainwater harvesting systems — in drought-hit areas.

The rural development ministry will get additional money to provide adequate drinking water facilities in rural India. Water in nine of the 12 major reservoirs of India is 33 per cent less than that of last year, creating a drinking water scare, the cabinet committee was told.

Another measure being taken up is utilising the Railways to transport water and fodder to distress areas. The Railways is already supplying drinking water and fodder to drought-hit areas of Rajasthan.

The committee also decided that the inter-ministerial group of drought would meet every week and state governments would be asked to prepare an action plan.

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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