NAC asks govt to step up minority welfare
Govt advised to address development deficits of religious minorities in the 12th Five Year Plan
The Sonia Gandhi-headed National Advisory Council (NAC) has asked the UPA government to revamp and substantially enhance programmes created for the benefit of religious minorities and address development deficits in places populated by them in the 12th Five Year Plan.
“Allocations (for programmes for minorities) overall need to be enhanced, given that religious minorities, including Muslims, constitute 18.4 per cent of the population, while budgetary allocations for schemes designed for them is a little over five per cent of total plan size,” the NAC had noted in a set of recommendations it recently sent to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Incidentally, Union Cabinet had recently decided to create a sub-quota of 4.5 per cent for religious minorities in the OBC quota, a move intended to brighten the prospect of the Congress in the forthcoming UP elections, where Muslims are a key constituents. Congress General Secretary Rahul Gandhi has been wooing the minorities in UP.
The Congress-led government at the Centre also recently drew flak from the Bharatiya Janata Party for seeking to introduce a quota for minorities in Lokpal.
The NAC noted that the per capita allocation of resources for minorities in 2010-11 was just Rs 797, which was significantly lower than allocations for other marginalised groups.
The advisory panel recommended that the scale of government contribution in minority welfare must be in proportion to the their population, large enough to make an impact on the depth of their economic and educational prospects.
The NAC acknowledged that a good beginning has been made to address the decades-old development deficits of the minority communities during the 11th Plan period.
It, however, also pointed out that the design and implementation structures of the government’s programmes for the minorities do not often target settlements and people directly and effectively.
It recommended strengthening of institutional structures designed to implement the government’s initiative – right from the Ministry of Minority Affairs to officials in the districts and below.
In its communiqué to the PMO, the panel recommended that the allocation for Multi-Sectoral Development Plan for the 90 minority concentrated districts should be substantially enhanced in the 12th plan.
It also wanted the Government to make a commitment that all rural and urban settlements with high proportion of minority residents would have basic services – like Integrated Child Development Schemes, clean drinking water, individual sanitation and sewerage and drainage.
The panel noted that the Government’s Scheme for Leadership Development of Minority Women, which was approved in the 11th plan with a small allocation, had not yet been rolled out.
It proposed that the pilot scheme must be re-designed and rolled by the Planning Commission, with the budget alloaction enhanced Rs 500 crore in the 12th plan.
