As Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi takes yet another opportunity to tom-tom his Van Bandhu package for the uplift of tribals from the newly-created tribal district of Tapi on Republic Day, a newly-released Planning Commission (PC) study based on review of tribal development during the Tenth Plan period has thrown some light on how the state needs to review its strategy of programme implementation for better results.
Sponsored by the central planning body, the study on ?Livelihood Options, Assets Creation Out Of Tribal Subplan (TSP) has found that during the review period, Gujarat not only failed in allocating funds proportionate to the scheduled tribes (ST) population, but also surrendered between 10% to 20% of the planned allocation in various projects as it could not spend the entire amount. This gains significance as the chief minister?s Van Bandhu package envisages an expenditure of Rs 15,000 crores over the next five years.
Amid statistics- only 13% of the tribal households in the state have sanitary facilities, and over a quarter have to fetch water from places farther than their homes – optimal utilisation of notional plan allocations gains significance. Of the Rs 44,853 crore total plan outlay, Rs 5,824 crore was allocated to the TSP, which accounts to just 12.98%, when the total state ST population is 14.8%.
Further, the breakup of the TSP expenditure shows that the funds directly targeting ST development account for only Rs 1,147.23 crore, which comes to 20.3% with rest of the funds accounting for indirect benefits. The study also found that the funds allocated for education, medical health, fisheries, animal husbandry, training and rural link roads were not commensurate with development priorities in tribal areas and between 10% to 20% had to be surrendered in the Tenth Plan period.
In a problem of inter-sector prioritisation, social sector areas like health and education were losing ground to issues of general welfare reported the study. For example, while the government spent more than the quota in technical education, water supply, and general welfare, the expenditure on general education, housing, and public health was just around 80%. The study has used statistics provided by the state government . The report also observed with some discomfort, that mechanisms put in place to monitor implementation of various tribal development schemes and projects were not functioning as stipulated.