Raw deal in Budget, say Dalits

By: Subodh Varma

Dalit and adivasi organisations have protested against the inadequate allocation for welfare of these communities in the Budget for 2017-18. According to a detailed analysis of allocations under various heads across ministries done by the National Campaign for Dalit and Human Rights(NCDHR), there is a shortfall of Rs 44,454 crore in the allocations made for Dalit communities and a shortfall of Rs 18,072 crore for adivasi communities.
They have also called for release of funds amounting to nearly Rs 12,000 crore meant for post-matric scholarships (PMS) for Dalits and adivasis that were not spent last year. This year’s allocation does not take into account this huge unspent overhang from last year.
The earlier policy of allocating Plan resources as per the population share of Dalits and adivasis in the population had to be changed this year because the Plan and Non-Plan heads were merged. In this new scenario, the share of allocations would get revised and work out to be 4.63 percent for Dalits and 2.39 percent for adivasis, the organisations said.

This follows from what the task force headed by Narendra Jadhav, set up by the Planning Commission in 2010, had suggested so that better allocation of resources for these sections could be done.

“In the current Budget year, the government has shifted away from making policy mandated special plans for SCs and STs under Scheduled Caste Sub Plan and the Tribal Sub Plan and reverted to an older system of welfare budget allocations for these communities. This in our analysis is retrogressive and makes SCs and STs mere beneficiaries of welfare programmes,” said Paul Divakar of NCDHR. Actual allocation for Dalits is just 2.5 percent of total expenditure while for adivasis it is 1.5 percent, he added.

According to the Dalit and adivasi groups, the finance ministry had issued clear directions to all the relevant ministries/departments through a government order dated August 23, 2016, to follow the Jadhav task force guidelines for allocations to the SC/ST schemes. But from the final allocations it is clear that the guidelines were given a miss and allocations were done on a prevailing limited basis, they said.

The analysis of NCDHR shows that several of the directly beneficial schemes for SCs & STs have been severely underfunded or funding has been slashed. Adeeper analysis of the nature of allocation for SC welfare schemes show that only 49 percent are for targeted schemes for SCs and STs. As per its calculations, the non-targeted schemes amount to Rs 26,684 crore for Dalits and Rs 16,276 crore for adivasis.

Source: The Times of India