Appointing more persons from SC/ST communities to the top post in PSUs, distribution of land among homeless dalits and their "hand-holding" by banks to promote entrepreneurship figure in the list of recommendations of a high-level government panel, set up for commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar.
Encouraging the admission of students belonging to SC/ST communities in private universities was another key suggestion, on which the government has asked the Secretary of Higher Education of the HRD Ministry to take appropriate action.
A national committee, chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and its Executive Committee, led Home Minister Rajnath Singh, have met a number to times to finalise the plans to observe the Dalit icon's birth anniversary and implement them.
Official sources said in one of the meetings, the Executive Committee noted that there are a very few chairman-cum-managing directors of public sector undertakings (PSUs) belonging to the SC/ST communities, hence efforts should be made to appoint capable and talented persons from these communities to such posts.
After the committee's recommendations, the Secretary of the Department of Finance has been asked to take up the matter.
Noting that entrepreneurship opportunities for SC/ST youths may be made available by extending training programmes and arranging work capital for them, the panel also suggested that each branch of public sector banks should try to "handhold" at least one SC/ST youth, as an entrepreneur, to generate more employment among them.
Responding to it, the government said the Ministry of Finance has written to all CMDs, CEOs and MDs of banks in this regard.
The suggestions were discussed in the meeting of the Executive Committee chaired by the Home Minister, which met on February 1 to give a final shape to the decisions.
Organising a "Run for Casteless India" and setting up a virtual museum with 3D interactive panorama to highlight the Dalit icon's life and achievements are the other suggestions.
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As per the committee's suggestion to organise a "Run for Casteless India" on the lines of "Run for Unity", an amount of Rs 171.76 lakh has been released to Nehru Yuva Kendra functioning under the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports.
On April 14, the birthday of Ambedkar, NYKS will organise it at 105 selected locations such as state capitals.
In another significant move, all 17 volumes of collected works of Ambedkar have been converted into Braille script for the convenience of the visually impaired.
There was also a suggestion to give at least 10 decimal land to homeless Dalits for construction of house.
The panel also came up the with idea that villages with more than 30 per cent population of Dalits should be declared Ambedkar Adarsh Gram where amenities are created at a priority level.
Another suggestion is to open one Ambedkar Residential School in each block in which 75 of seats should be reserved for SC/ST students, where they are free food and cloth.
In the first meeting of the national committee on July 23, last year, the committee made a number of suggestions like the need to make efforts for encouraging admission of students belonging to SC/ST in private university.
Modi laid the foundation stone for construction of Ambedkar International Centre in the national capital last year and has begun the process for setting up Ambedkar National Memorial at Alipur Road here.
Besides, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) Pune, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, has been entrusted to design a virtual museum with 3-D interactive panorama to make people aware of life and works of Ambedkar as a champion of the underprivileged.
Sources in the committee say that the preliminary virtual museum has been created by the C-DAC. On January 14, this year, some more artifacts on Ambedkar have been provided to C-DAC.
