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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Culture prod on schemes-Pheroze L Vincent

Culture prod on schemes-Pheroze L Vincent

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published Published on Apr 28, 2012   modified Modified on Apr 28, 2012

Several activists have asked the Planning Commission to take into account cultural norms if it wanted to ensure success of minority welfare schemes.

To make his point, Shabnam Hashmi, of the NGO Anhad, cited as example the plan panel’s proposal of giving bicycles to girls from the minority community where school attendance is low.

“This,” Hashmi said, “shows the complete lack of understanding of cultural norms in Muslim areas.”

While bicycles provide mobility to most aspiring schoolchildren to reach their classrooms far from home, minority girls in large parts of the country are confined to a half-kilometre radius of their homes.

Bicycle or not, they can’t go to a school in a non-minority village far away, she explained.

Hashmi and other activists submitted a document titled “The Minorities and The Twelfth Five Year Plan” to the Planning Commission on April 23.

The document not only talks about schemes but also about reforming delivery mechanisms. It also points out the disparities in funding for minorities vis-à-vis other backward groups.

The document said that for the year 2010-11, the “amount assigned per head for minorities was Rs 138”, while for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes it was Rs 1,228 and Rs 1,450 respectively. In the “11th plan, the outlay was Rs 1,400 crore, out of which only Rs 487 crore have been used up during four years….”

According to activist S.M. Hilal, who participated in the Planning Commission’s deliberations for the 12th plan, the sense of security for minorities should be given priority. “Everything hinges on this,” he explained, adding that if schools sanctioned for minority-dominated districts were built in non-minority villages, parents would not “risk” sending their children.

“Even other schemes of higher education and employment are linked to this. As long as there is communal profiling by enforcement agencies, Muslims will stay away from schemes for which they have to venture out of their areas.”

The document has asked the commission to give incentives to states and officers who perform and take penal action against non-performance. “The 12th Five Year Plan must include new schemes to neutralise institutional bias, to eliminate discrimination, biases, prejudices from the hearts and minds of the state actors,” it says.

Hilal said the steering committee and the working group on empowerment of minorities in the 12th plan had recommended that the unit for the flagship Multi Sectoral Development Programme (MsDP) should be blocks and not districts, as invariably projects in the 90 minority-concentrated districts come up in majority-dominated areas.

Funds for minorities are also allotted to non-minorities, he explained. “Forty per cent of the MsDP funds is spent on the Indira Awas Yojana which has a cap of 15 per cent spending for minorities. In effect, it transfers a bulk of minority welfare funds to other government plans,” he explained.

“The committees have also recommended that 100 towns and cities with minority concentration also be targeted with welfare schemes and, like scholarships for SC/STs, the state-wise cap on scholarships for minorities be lifted,” he added.

For better accountability, the Planning Commission has been requested to create a national data bank which should be regularly updated with data on minorities.

The Telegraph, 28 April, 2012, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1120428/jsp/frontpage/story_15428972.jsp#.T5ulC4FXOkw


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