#dnaEdit: Failed plans

With the social justice ministry reportedly mulling penal provisions to prevent diversion of funds meant for Dalits under the Special Component Plan(SCP), a longstanding demand of Dalit and Adivasi rights activists for reforming the SCP and the Tribal Sub Plan(TSP) may hopefully get the attention it deserves from the Centre. Andhra Pradesh was the first state to frame legislation preventing the diversion of SCSP/TSP funds with Karnataka following suit including provisions to jail violating bureaucrats. The SCP, now called the Scheduled Castes Sub Plan(SCSP), and the TSP is the economic component of social justice measures to bring Dalits and Adivasis on an equal footing with others by reserving funds across central ministries and state government departments in proportion to the Dalit and Adivasi population at the national and state levels. The diversion of funds is but one of the reasons for the SCSP/TSP’s failure. The other reasons for benefits not reaching the target group — inadequate allocation of funds proportionate to the SC/ST population, poor identification of schemes and faulty service delivery systems — must engage the attention of the new government if it is to reform the two plans conceptualised in the 1970s.

The 11th five-year plan(2007-12) allocated Rs96,071 crore for SCSP and Rs53,141 crore for TSP. Despite a huge outlay, the exact allocation to individual schemes and their implementation details were unavailable to help effectively track usage, diversions and fund-lapse. This prompted the government in 2010 and 2011 to insist that scheme-wise earmarked funds be separately indicated in budget estimates, but to no avail. The bureaucracy’s contention that the SCSP/TSP is impractical in areas like primary education, health, roads and agriculture are belied by the fact that several ministries where programmes and provisioning can easily be earmarked for the benefit of Dalits and Adivasis have ignored this prerogative, while surreptitiously diverting it for general-purpose schemes. The failure of the Nirbhaya Fund for women’s safety — despite an allocation of Rs1,000 crore in two successive union budgets — yet found no takers within government departments betrays the lack of imagination and coordination. In areas like skilled employment and owning small-scale industrial units where Dalits and Adivasis are poorly represented, SCSP/TSP funding could help in quickly addressing their development needs. Despite a heightened public discourse on gender issues and demands from women’s groups for better transportation facilities for night-time travel, improvements in law and order mechanism and counselling centres to assist sexual abuse victims, the apathy towards the Nirbhaya Fund and in evolving a coordinated response was criminal, if not collective failure at its worst.

Perhaps, what the Centre needs to do is look at successive models evolved by the states and suggest that others, including itself, follow suit. The Karnataka government’s schemes  subsidising SC/ST dairy farmers with an incentive of Rs2, a litre of milk, in addition to Rs4 a litre being given to all dairy farmers, and the increased subsidy from 50 to 75 per cent to SC/ST farmers for procuring and sowing seeds, can easily be replicated in other states. Rather than wait for other states, the proposed central legislation penalising diversions must be tabled in Parliament quickly. As the Modi government gets cracking on improving governance, rationalising fund allocation, quashing non-performing schemes, streamlining service delivery, and reducing wasteful expenditure, revitalising the SCSP/TSP and the Nirbhaya Fund will go a long way in addressing the social justice concerns that the UPA government appeared enamoured with, but failed at implementation.