Alleging a step motherly treatment of non-Congress governments by the Centre, Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa has asked it to work together with the state governments on social welfare programmes.
In her speech circulated in the 56th meeting of the National Development Council held on Sunday in New Delhi, Jayalalithaa said the 12th Five Year Plan should have an ambitious target of 10 per cent growth, even as she raised concerns about the implementation of projects to achieve it.
In her speech, she said, "Despite repeated requests for special assistance, funds are not provided to Tamil Nadu while a special package has been given to West Bengal for the only reason that the present ruling party in West Bengal is an ally of the ruling party at the Centre. This only indicates that step motherly treatment is given to non-Congress governments."
She said states are being reduced "to the status of glorified Municipal Corporations" with too much interference. The chief minister said that the research projections in the Planning Commission's Approach Paper to the 12th Five Year Plan was completely out of sync, as it indicates that what is left over as central support to the states for their plan expenditure is a "relatively small" 18 per cent of the aggregate.
She called for measures including substantially stepped up and untied support to state plans, and wanted the grant element in normal central assistance increased to at least 50 per cent for non-special category states. the Eleventh Plan period, some of this support was pre-empted for central flagship programmes. "This approach is unfair," she said.
The state government is working on various projects to improve performance in agriculture, water, solar energy, energy, transport and port infrastructure, health and environment sectors and is looking at central government support for implementation of these schemes, according to the chief minister.
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She also critisised the Centre for not responding to the state's request to partner with its free laptop initiative. Claiming that the initiative would become the worlds largest government effort to provide laptop computers to students, Jayalalithaa said, "However, the Central government that talks of supporting innovation has not responded so far."
The government must enhance the pension under the National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) which still provides for a pension of only Rs 200 per month, fixed many years ago.
The thirteen flaghip programmes announced by the government now were earlier provided to the states as normal central assistance to finance state determinied priorities. The united funds are now provided by Centre while the states are still closer to the people and thus could identify needs of the society.