The fate of SC/ST funds is a secret even to the sarkar!

It’s happened again. Nearly Rs 8,000 crore, earmarked by law for the development of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe communities in Karnataka, have been diverted for general infrastructure development since 2018. In Delhi, citizens’ RTI interventions exposed the government’s decision to deploy such funds to build stadiums for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. The Karnataka government’s controversial exploits stand revealed, thanks to Deccan Herald’s reporting.

Since 2013, a special law in Karnataka has required compulsory allocation of 17.15% and 6.95% of budgetary funds to address gaps in the socio-economic development of SC and ST communities, respectively. Under this law, an official can be dismissed from service, even sent to jail for six months, for violating this statutory guarantee. Despite such systems, generation after generation, these deprived communities pay the price for the progress of other segments of society.

A loophole in the law allows babus to divert such funds to build flyovers and roads by labelling them “non-divisible” infrastructure works ‘deemed’ to benefit SC/STs as a side effect. Karnataka’s practice is not unique. Many central government departments also make such notional budgetary allocations without bothering to ascertain who all from these communities have benefited.

Also Read | Rs 7K-cr SC/ST funds 'diverted' for infra works in Karnataka

But since August 2021, the Tribal Affairs Ministry has begun reviewing the performance of 40 central departments that are required to mandatorily spend a portion of their budget for the benefit of STs, as per the NITI Aayog’s stipulation. The publicly-disclosed minutes of these assessment meetings reveal the lackadaisical manner of implementation of this ST Component (STC), known earlier as the Tribal Sub-Plan.

For example, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy admitted that wind power plants were installed in tribal areas using STC funds but it did not know which ST villages are being supplied with the electricity so generated. In recent years, the Petroleum & Natural Gas Ministry allocated less than the required 4.5% of its funds for STC, and actually spent even lesser. It admitted not knowing how many STs had benefited from the eight crore LPG connections issued under the Ujjwala scheme.

The Education Ministry cut a sorry figure when its representative said that despite releasing 11.7% of its funds under STC for the mid-day meal programme, it has no clue about the number of ST children who were fed under it. The Environment and Forests Ministry spends STC funds on afforestation and creation of livelihoods based on piggeries and poultry farming but has no data about the number of ST families covered so far. The Water Resources Ministry politely blamed the states for not supplying data about ST farmers who have been served by their har khet ko pani (irrigate every farm) scheme utilising STC allocations.

DH Impact | SC/ST fund diversion in Karnataka: Activists, Congress hit out at government

When in 2021, the Opposition described the ruling establishment as a no-data-available (NDA) government, we hardly realised that the malaise ran deeper than its tendency to hold on to sarkari secrets. Crucial information is simply not being collected to assess the outcomes of development spending in many sectors.

In such a bleak scenario, the Tribal Affairs Ministry’s ADIGRAMS web portal displaying granular data about developmental disparities affecting ST settlements across the country comes as a breath of fresh air. At the click of a button, you can find out which ST village does not have a pucca road or a school or a health centre or a bank or piped water facility or at least a marketplace. Now, if only this portal were to be updated in real-time with physical progress data to show how development spending is plugging these gaps, the government’s dashboard style of transparent governance can become truly verifiable.

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