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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Village focus for minority welfare by Radhika Ramaseshan

Village focus for minority welfare by Radhika Ramaseshan

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published Published on Nov 30, 2011   modified Modified on Nov 30, 2011

Minority welfare schemes should target not districts but smaller units like hamlets and urban wards so that nobody passes under the radar, Sonia Gandhi’s National Advisory Council has told the Centre.

The Centre’s 15-point programme for minorities, based on Sachar Committee recommendations, aims at multi-sector development in 90 districts with large minority populations. But the council believes this approach misses many who most need help while many non-minority residents reap indirect benefits from the schemes.

“In most cases, they (the welfare schemes) were located in mixed areas, so the targets were lost sight of,” a council member said.

In its draft recommendations, the council’s sub-group on minority affairs has asked the Centre to collect data on hamlets and wards and make these the primary units of the schemes.

The council has also proposed that the 15-point programme evolve “need-driven” schemes instead of just extending existing central schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Services, Indira Awas Yojana and Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan.

Currently, the programme seems “aimed to saturate coverage of existing national programmes”, the council has noted.

It also wants “bottom-up” planning that engages all the stakeholders rather than let district officials formulate the schemes and present the targets with a fait accompli.

Some of the panel’s specific suggestions:

* All pre-matric scholarships must be 100 per cent centrally funded so that state governments with a “pronounced anti-minority bias” cannot thwart the education of young minority children;

* Hostels must be set up for minority students on the lines of those for Dalit and tribal students;

* The government should create an “urban youth support line” that will pass information to minority youths on career options, access to state schemes, placement services and certification facilities.

A participatory study with Muslim youths in Hyderabad, the council says, has shown that while they had access to education, “usually of a poor quality”, they “lacked guidance, institutional access and entry to social networks that could help them gain access to opportunities”.

Council members such as Harsh Mander, Farah Naqvi and A.K. Shiva Kumar drafted the recommendations, which come at a time political parties are scrambling for Muslim votes ahead of the Uttar Pradesh polls.

The 90 districts now earmarked under the 15-point programme include 66 with Muslim majority, 13 dominated by Christians, 10 with Buddhist concentration and one with Sikh majority. Nine of these districts are in Bengal, 12 in Assam, seven in Bihar and 15 in Uttar Pradesh.


The Telegraph, 30 November, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111130/jsp/nation/story_14817274.jsp


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