Amidst the row over thinker Ashish Nandy’s remarks about Dalit and non Dalit corruption, the Planning Commission and the 12th Five Year Plan are being accused of actually legitimizing diversion of money meant for SC/ST plan in the budget by various ministries.
The Planning Commission came up with a proposal in the 12th Plan document to bridge the shortfall in allocations for SC/ST Special Component Plan by various ministries. The proposal, however, ended up suggesting not how the shortfall of Rs 63,000 crore can be bridged with more funds, but devising a mechanism to make the shortfall magically disappear.
The mechanism suggested by the Plan document is linkage of funds for SCP and STP with consumption data of the community . When this is done, the shortfall of Rs 63,000 crore for the year 2012-13 is reduced to a mere Rs 3,641 crore .
This is a result of a two step strategy: excluding 43 of the 68 ministries from the obligation to set aside funds for SC/ST and two calculation of funds on the basis of consumption data of SC/ST. This helped the document derive a shortfall of Rs 3641 crore for scheduled caste sub plan and none for scheduled tribe sub plan which initially was showing a short fall of over Rs 30,000 crore.
Planning Commission credits a task force headed by member Narendra Jadhav for this formula.
The new method of calculation effectively clears the Government of any blame of diverting money meant for SC/ST for other uses, and reduces the funds set aside for SC/ST.
Social Justice Minister Kumari Selja raised the matter of reducing funding for SC/ST special component plan with the Planning Commission in December but the document remains unchanged. Officials in the ministry said that they received an assurance that the Commission would do something about it. But we are not aware of any changes yet, a source in the ministry said.
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Planning Commission member Narendra Jadhav said the Plan document is being revised. But he refused to comment on whether the proposal on shortfall in special component plan would be dropped or altered. Wait for ten days,’’ he said.
Many Dalit groups like National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights which have been annually releasing reports on the diversion of funds meant for SC/ST by various ministries have condemned the proposal suggested in the Plan document.
Says Paul Divakar of NCDHR: If this proposal is carried out then all the diversion done by ministries over the last 25 years would be justified. It would also nullify the very existence of the special component plan thus going back to the 70s when none existed.
The SC/ST Special Component Plan was devised in 70s after the Government and the Planning Commmission realized that funds targeted for development were not helping SC/ST. So it was decided to set aside 7.5 per cent of total Government spending on specific spending targeted on SC/ST, points out activists of Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability. But massive diversion of the money meant for SC/ST has been exposed in recent years.