The government is set to take the first step towards the universalisation of pension for the aged, widows and the physically challenged, as it mulls removing the distinction between those above and below the poverty line for selection of beneficiaries in the 12th Five-Year Plan.
The proposal, with big financial implications, has been pushed by activists Aruna Roy and Baba Adhav, besides many organisations.
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Thursday said pensions would be given on the basis of some exclusion criteria on the socio-economic census that is on.
Activist Nikhil Dey welcomed the news and said this was a great step forward. The schemes under the rural development ministry now provide a pension of just Rs 200 a month, while states complement this with more.
The 12th Plan would also for the first time give states some say in spending the funds of centrally-sponsored rural development programmes, according to their own priorities and needs. The Plan has allowed a small window of Rs 40,000 crore for such flexibility to the ministry, which overall is getting an allocation of Rs 490,000 crore. The window, called a rural flexi fund, would have a central share of 70 per cent (Rs 28,000 crore), while the rest would be from the state’s share. Ramesh and Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, announced the fund on Thursday.
They said states would even have the freedom to make their own schemes and finance it with the funds meant for central programmes like the NREGS or the Indira Awas Yojana, within the limits set for each state.
The minister said the mechanism for deciding each state's share of this untied money would be on the basis of proposals sent by states and would ensure no no state was left out. The new fund would marginally increase the allocations of the ministry, which gets close to Rs 1 lakh crore annually. This would increase by Rs 8,000 crore each year, thanks to the fund.
The 12th Plan also envisages a major role for non-government organisations (NGOs) in rural development. It sets aside a fund of Rs 500 crore to carry out rural development in 170 backward districts in partnership with NGOs.
A Rs 500-crore corpus for an entity called the Bharat Livelihood Foundation is being set up to facilitate partnerships between states and NGOs in Naxal-hit states in the central belt, where the poorest and most vulnerable districts are located, Ramesh said.
The NGOs and the Foundation would be covered under the Right to Information Act. The Comptroller and Auditor General would ensure the funds reached the intended purpose, Ramesh said.
The 12th Plan would also, for the first time, remove the distinction between those below and above the poverty line (BPL and APL) in all rural development schemes, on the lines of the NREGS. In the housing scheme of the Indira Awas Yojana, the homeless would be selected on the basis of lists generated through the BPL census and they would be entitled to Rs 20,000 each for puchase of land. For the landed who need housing, the lists would be on the basis of the socio-economic census mentioned earlier.
