Budget silent on Plan outlay for SC/STs
28 Feb 2010, 0105 hrs IST, ET Bureau
NEW DELHI: What is the budgetary outlay for the welfare of Scheduled
Castes and Tribes? The answer is not immediately apparent to a lay
reader of
the Budget documents. For a government and a political leadership
trying to establish its pro-Dalit credentials, this kind of sloppy
accounting is quite surprising.
Dalit leader and Indian Justice Party president Udit Raj, for example,
has demanded that the government increase the outlay for the ministry
of social justice and empowerment from the Rs 4,500 crore allocated in
the Budget, to Rs 61,187 crore, the share of the total Plan
expenditure that corresponds with the share of Scheduled Castes in the
population. While conceding that outlays of other ministries would
also include the special component outlays meant for Dalits, the sheer
lack of accounting transparency in this regard has led him to conclude
that the government is unlikely to have allocated more than 5% of the
total Plan expenditure to Scheduled Caste welfare and development.
The government now undertakes gender budgeting. A question that arises
from Mr Raj's demand is whether the government should not create an
accounting framework that makes it clear how much of the taxpayers
money actually goes to improve the lives of the subaltern sections of
society that the government and the political class seek to uplift.
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