[Reader-list] Reg: Series of Articles on India & Its Development - 1

[Rakesh Iyer]

Link:  http://www.frontlineonnet.com/fl2821/stories/20111021282102500.htm

Article:

*For social justice*

P.S. KRISHNAN

*Any new system for the socio-economic progress of Dalits and other
vulnerable sections must not lose sight of Special Component Plan goals.

*

THE Planning Commission's “Approach to the 12th Five Year Plan” deals with
the Scheduled Castes (S.C.s) briefly in a portion of Chapter 11 titled
“Social and Regional Equity”. It, however, significantly mentions the need
to devise a new system that can overcome the difficulties experienced with
regard to the implementation of the Special Component Plan for Scheduled
Castes (SCP) and the Tribal Sub-Plan (TSP). But it does not specify the
proposed new system.

An effective and purposeful new system can be devised only by understanding
clearly the objective of the SCP and the TSP and why it has not been
achieved substantively until now.

The SCP and the TSP have a constitutional mandate that commands the state
to create a regime of equality, including social equality, through
comprehensive measures of social justice. Social equality means ensuring
equality between the S.C.s and the Scheduled Tribes (S.T.s) – and also the
Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs), Other Backward Classes
(OBCs) and Backward Classes (B.C.s), which include the bulk of the
religious minorities who are in fact converts from “untouchable” and other
“low” castes – on the one hand and the Socially Advanced Castes (SACs, that
is, non-S.C., non-S.T., non-B.C.) on the other, in all parameters of life –
economy, occupation, education (at all levels), housing, health and
nutrition, and so on.

In line with this constitutional mandate, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh,
who is also the Chairman of the Planning Commission, in his address on June
27, 2005, to the 51st meeting of the National Development Council, which
approves Plans and Approaches to Plans, directed that the gap in the
socio-economic development of the S.C.s and the S.T.s should be bridged
within 10 years. What this means is that the S.C.s and the S.T.s should
reach the levels of the SACs in each and every parameter. For this, the SCP
ought to be formulated and implemented by the Centre and the States in such
a manner that the socio-economic gaps between the S.C.s and the SACs are
eliminated in every parameter by comprehensive, integrated,
objective-oriented radical planning on the basis of the needs and rights of
the S.C.s and keeping in view the overarching goals of their economic
liberation from agricultural and other servitude, educational parity at all
levels, equality with the SACs in every parameter and the protection of
their social dignity and security. Similarly in respect of the S.T.s,
mutatis mutandis.

In the existing procedure, Central and State Plan outlays are first
allocated among different sectors and Ministries/departments. Their
programmes and schemes do not take into account the priorities and needs of
the S.C.s and the S.T.s. Thereafter, the Ministries in charge of the S.C.s
and the S.T.s, along with the Planning Commission and their State
counterparts, seek from each Ministry/department its contribution to the
SCP and the TSP. The contributions consist of notional amounts or amounts
that are of no or marginal relevance to the S.C.s and the S.T.s. No wonder
that after 11 Plans and about three and a half decades of the SCP most of
the S.C.s continue to be rural-resident agricultural labourers; have
limited access to education, especially higher and professional education;
and continue to be subjected to rampant “untouchability”, atrocities and
bonded labour. In urban areas, they are mostly engaged in precarious
unorganised casual labour and sections of them are still subjected to
scavenging and other safai labour. Their habitations continue to be most
uninhabitable.

I had the privilege of conceptualising and initiating the SCP in 1978 and
pursuing it until 1982 in the Sixth Plan as Joint Secretary in the Home
Ministry in charge of the S.C.s. Since 1983-84, when preparations for the
Seventh Plan began, and thereafter at every stage and before the
formulation of every Plan, in my various capacities, including as
Secretary, Ministry of Welfare, in 1990 and as Chairman or member of
successive Planning Commission working groups and steering committees, I
have pressed that the starting point of the SCP should be to set apart for
the S.C.s the population-equivalent share of the total Five-Year and Annual
Plan outlay of the Centre and each State before the Plan outlay is
distributed among sectors/Ministries/departments. Within this SCP corpus,
plans should be formulated for the S.C.s in order to achieve the
aforementioned goals. National and State-level expert bodies duly
constituted should, on the basis of these plans, sanction projects in
different sectors/Ministries/Departments, which will be accountable to
these bodies; monitor implementation and secure fulfilment of the project
objectives and overarching goals. I also put this in the public domain
since 1996.

The Plans for the S.C.s thus prepared and approved should provide, inter
alia, for the following programmes and schemes:

1. Endowing every rural S.C. family with a viable extent of land for
transforming them from a class of agricultural labourers to a class of
independent peasants, fulfilling the pre-Independence slogan of “Land to
the Tiller” and commitments in the United Progressive Alliance's (UPA)
common minimum programme (CMP) of 2004 and in the President's address to
Parliament in 2004.

The Central and State Ministries/departments in charge of land reforms
should be required to present a project to complete this process of land
distribution on a village-to-village basis like a blitzkrieg through
special task forces (STFs) set up in every taluk/tehsil/mandal (TSTFs) and
every district (DSTFs) to identify government-owned land, bhoodan land,
undistributed ceiling-surplus land, reclaimable usar/ choudu/
uppu/alkaline/saline and other wasteland. The distribution should be done
to all rural S.C. families and to other landless poor agricultural labour
families (who are mostly B.C.s or S.T.s), evicting ineligible encroachers.
A State-level special task force (SSTF) should be part of this set-up to
take stock of unimplemented Supreme Court judgments and pending litigation
and take all steps to maximise surplus land and ensure that the TSTFs and
DSTFs complete the task in a year or at the most two.

Where the above categories of land are not enough to provide for all rural
S.C.s, the project should include acquisition or purchase of private land
and a massive programme of reclamation of the lakhs of acres of wasteland
and their distribution.

2. Undertaking a comprehensive national programme of minor irrigation for
all lands of the S.C.s, which they already have and which will be made
available to them, and the S.T.s, through community borewells, tubewells,
check dams, lifts, and so on, facilitating income-augmenting multi-cropping
and fulfilling an unfulfilled and unbudgeted commitment in the CMP and the
President's address of 2004.

These twin measures will improve the dismal figures, worse than sub-Saharan
Africa's, of S.C. and S.T. infant and child mortality, women's and
children's malnutrition and anaemia; enable the S.C.s to resist
“untouchability”; and free their children from the compulsion of labour to
supplement their meagre family income and enable them to go to school. They
will add significantly to foodgrain and other agricultural production;
secure food security; check inflation and push up the all-India human
resource indicators, which are among the lowest in the world, to
respectable levels; and enable optimal growth of the economy. This should
be the most important component of the Prime Minister's call, on the 83rd
Foundation Day of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) on
July 16, 2011, for a second Green Revolution that is more broad-based,
inclusive and sustainable.

3. Establishing a network of high-quality residential schools throughout
the country to accommodate all S.C. children up to Class XII, and thereby
fulfilling a recommendation in the 2008 report of the Group of Ministers on
Dalit Affairs set up in 2005.

4. Securing the full quota of reservation in higher education, supported by
overdue legislation for reservation for the S.C.s, along with the S.T.s and
the B.C.s, in private educational institutions, to fulfil the purpose of
the 93rd Constitution Amendment, 2005, inserting new clause (5) in Article
15.

5. Fulfilling the aspirations of the educated section among the S.C.s,
which, though small, is of highly catalytic value. This should be done
through

(a) special coaching and training, aided by an overdue commitment in the
CMP and the President's address of 2004 to enact legislation, free from
exclusions, exceptions and exemptions, for reservation in services; and

(b) proactive promotion of entrepreneurship among them through centrally
funded incubation and mentoring centres in universities and other
prestigious institutions and provision of all facilities and support
through a single window.

6. Firmly checking and severely punishing “untouchability” and atrocities,
aided by the enactment of comprehensive amendments to the S.C.s and S.T.s
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act to strengthen the Act and its
implementation, formulated by a national coalition of 70 Dalit and human
rights organisations with me as its Chief Adviser and communicated to the
government in January 2010.

7. Instituting special schemes and programmes to meet extra disadvantages
of the most vulnerable groups among the S.C.s, aided by a comprehensive
piece of legislation that I drafted and a working group of the Labour
Ministry approved in July 2011. The groups include manual scavengers and
other sanitation workers; bonded labourers; nomadic, semi-nomadic and
Vimukta Jathi tribes of the S.C.s; Devadasis, Jogins, etc., mostly S.C.s
subjected to “sacral harlotry”; Bacchras, etc., subjected to “secular
harlotry”; and S.C. women and children.

The 12th Plan Approach document takes note of the commitment to eradicate
manual scavenging by the 11th Plan end and promises to fulfil it on
priority in the 12th Plan. Similar commitments have been made many times in
the past. This is also true of bonded labour. The new system is necessary
to make this a reality at long last.

8. Making S.C. rural bastis and urban slums habitable by humanly acceptable
standards with all facilities and connectivities.

9. Providing marketable skill-development for S.C. agricultural labourers
who cannot be provided land despite all efforts and for S.C. urban
unorganised casual labourers, and also providing them means of acquiring
ownership of their means of labour, such as making the pullers of hired
rickshaws owners of solar-powered rickshaws.

The new system can and must achieve all this and not merely stop with
sanctioning projects to be executed by the relevant Ministries and other
agencies. It must also follow them up continuously with the help of
district bodies, monitor and secure feedbacks and take timely corrective
action instead of resorting to post-mortem. This new system has been
detailed in the report of the sub group-I (on perspective planning and
strategies) under my chairmanship, of the working group on empowerment of
S.C.s in the 12th Plan, and has received unanimous support in the working
group.

This is how a meaningful SCP for the S.C.s should be formulated. The S.C.s
deserved a whole chapter of the “Approach” detailing the above. The
sectoral chapters also ought to have dealt with their meaningful
contributions to the S.C.s and the S.T.s.

What has been outlined for the S.C.s, also applies to the S.T.s and the
TSP, in accordance with well-known specificities of the S.T.s. Regarding
the B.C.s, the Approach document has the misapprehension that the B.C.s
have no constitutional status. In fact, the B.C.s are also covered by
specific Articles of the Constitution. The working group for empowerment of
B.C.s in the Tenth Plan, of which I was the chairman, worked out
appropriate methodology for B.C. development, and this was reiterated by
the working group in the Eleventh Plan. The Approach document says nothing
about the development of the B.C.s, including those of religious
minorities. This grave lacuna can be made good by implementing the
methodological recommendations of these two working groups.
*

P.S. Krishnan retired as Secretary, Government of India, in 1990 and has
been active in the field of Social Justice & Empowerment of the S.C.s, the
S.T.s and the B.C.s, including B.C.s of religious minorities, for more than
six decades
*