Indian Economy, 5th edition (107 page)

URBAN INFRASTRUCTURE

To provide better urban infrastructure, housing and sanitation in the country, the central government has been allocating resources to state governments through various centrally sponsored schemes and providing finances through national financial institutions in the country. Some of the initiatives in this area are the following:

Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM)

The JNNURM has two of its four components devoted to shelter and basic service needs of the poor. These are: Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BSUP) for 65 select cities and Integrated Housing & Slum Development Programme (IHSDP) for other cities and towns. All states are covered under the BSUP and all states and UTs except Lakshadweep under the IHSDP.

Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY)

RAY is to provide support for shelter and redevelopment and creation of affordable housing stock to states that are willing to assign property rights to slum dwellers. RAY is to be implemented in two phases: Phase I, which will be for two years from the date of approval of the scheme (2011-13) and Phase II which will be for the remaining period of the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2013-17). The preparatory phase of RAY is named the
Slum Free City Planning Scheme
. In order to address the credit enablement of economically weaker section (EWS) and lower income group (LIG) households, the government has agreed to establish a Credit Risk Guarantee Fund under RAY. The government has also approved the establishment of a Credit Risk Guarantee Fund Trust for low income housing (CGFT) to administer and oversee the operations of the scheme.

Affordable Housing in Partnership (AHIP)

The government has launched the AHIP scheme with the aim of constructing of one million houses forn EWS/LIG/MIG with at least 25 per cent reserved for the EWS category. The scheme aims at partnership between various agencies/government/parastatals/urban local bodies/developers for realising the goal of affordable housing for all.

Interest Subsidy Scheme for Housing the Urban Poor (ISHUP)

The ISHUP seeks to supplement the efforts of the government through the JNNURM to comprehensively address the housing shortage by providing subsidies on the bank loans forwarded for the housing to urban poor.

Integrated Low Cost Sanitation Scheme (ILCS)

The ILCS aims at conversion of individual dry latrines into pour flush latrines, thereby liberating manual scavengers from the age-old, obnoxious practice of manually carrying night soil. The guidelines were revised with effect from January 17, 2008. The scheme is on an all-town coverage basis irrespective of the population criterion and is limited to EWS households. The scheme is funded on a sharing basis, i.e., central subsidy 75 per cent, state subsidy 15 per cent, and beneficiary share 10 per cent.

SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Education and skill development play a pivotal role in economic development and growth of any country as they provide an environment for creating jobs and help in reduction of poverty and other related social fallouts. A new strategic framework for skill development for early school leavers and existing workers has been developed since
May 2007
in close consultation with industry, state governments, and experts.

Achievements of the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) upto December 2012 (in 2012-13) has been as given below –

•
Approved 24 training projects for imparting skill training in a
wide array of sectors
like – healthcare; tourism; hospitality and travel; banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI); retail; IT; electronics; textiles; leather; handicrafts and automotive; agriculture, cold chains and refrigeration; tailoring; carpentry and masonry.

•
Besides formation of skill councils for seven sectors, proposals related to food processing, telecom, agriculture, plumbing, logistics, capital goods, and construction sectors have also been approved during this period.

•
With its partners it had skilled around 1,39,305 people and placed approximately 97,116 of them, thereby achieving
placement of 70 per cent
.

•
Special skills training initiatives of the NSDC have been helping youth in Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states join the mainstream. The NSDC has been able to get some of India’s biggest corporate groups interested in the private sector-led skills training programme for graduates and post-graduates in Jammu and Kashmir called
Udaan
. Scaling up of this initiative is targeted to make 40,000 people in Jammu & Kashmir skilled and placed in jobs over a five-year span. In the north-east region, the NSDC is partnering the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports in the Youth Employability Skills
(YES)
project.

Union Budget 2013-14
announced that youth will be motivated to voluntarily join skill development programmes – National Skill Development Corporation to set the curriculum and standards for training in different skills for which Rs. 1,000 crore has been set apart for 2013-14. The GoI has set a target of skilling
50 million
people in the
12th Plan
, including
9 million
in 2013-14 (BE).

UIDAI

After successfully completing Phase I enrolments, the UIDAI (Unique Identification Authority Of India) is actively engaged in Phase II in which 40 crore residents are to be enrolled before end 2014.

As of December 2012, 24.93 crore Aadhaars had been generated and approximately 20 crore Aadhaar letters dispatched. The UIDAI has also established infrastructure to generate 10 lakh Aadhaars per day and process 10 million authentication transactions a day. Apart from meeting targets related to enrolments, significant amount of effort has been spent on enabling service delivery of government schemes with Aadhaar online authentication and Aadhaar-enabled benefits transfers to bank accounts of beneficiaries. The government has decided to initiate direct transfer of subsidy under various social schemes into beneficiaries’ bank accounts. The transfer will be enabled through a payments bridge known as Aadhaar Payment Bridge (APB) wherein funds can be transferred into any Aadhaar-enabled bank account on the basis of the Aadhaar number. This eliminates chances of fraud/error in the cash transfer process. The Aadhaar number will be linked to the beneficiary database so that ghosts/ duplicates are weeded out from the beneficiary list.

To make withdrawal of money by the beneficiaries easier and more accessible and friendly, micro ATMs will be set up by banks/ post offices throughout the country in an open manner particularly with the help of SHGs, community service centres (CSCs), post offices, grocery stores, petrol pumps, etc. in rural areas and accessible pockets. This is being done initially in 51 pilot districts across the country from January 1, 2013. Pilots on direct benefit transfer (DBT) have also been successfully conducted in the states of Jharkhand, Tripura, and Maharashtra to transfer monetary benefits related to rural employment, pension, the IAY, and other social welfare schemes. An important pilot is the fair price shops in East Godavari and Hyderabad districts of Andhra Pradesh which are being enabled to carry out online Aadhaar authentication. In another important pilot with oil marketing companies (OMCs) in Mysore, delivery of LPG gas cylinders is being done only after Aadhaar online authentication of customers.

EDUCATION

India which had a bottom-heavy population is now graduating to an economy with middle- heavy population. To reap the benefits of this demographic dividend to the full, India has to provide education to its population through quality education. The Twelfth Plan Approach Paper focuses on teacher training and evaluation and measures to enforce accountability. It also stresses the need to build capacity in secondary schools to absorb the pass- outs from expanded primary enrolments. The GER in higher education must be targeted to increase from nearly 18 per cent at present to say 25 per cent by 2016-17.

Elementary and Secondary Education 13.30The government has initiated many schemes for elementary and secondary education. Some are as follows:

Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA)/Right to Education (RTE)

Free education for all children between the ages of 6 and 14 years has been made a fundamental right under the RTE Act 2009. While the RTE Act was notified on 27 August 2009 for general information, the notification for enforcing the provisions of the Act with effect from April 1, 2010 was issued on February 16, 2010. It mandates that every child has a right to elementary education of satisfactory and equitable quality in a formal school which satisfies certain essential norms and standards. The reform processes initiated in 2010-11 continued during the year 2011-12. Some recent developments in this regard include:

(i)
Notification of Central RTE Rules on 8 April 2010, followed by notification of State RTE Rules by the states,

(ii)
Revision of the SSA norms to correspond with the provisions of the RTE Act including norms for sanctioning additional teacher posts, classrooms, teaching-learning equipment to enable states to move to an eight-year elementary education cycle, enhancement of academic support for better school supervision, and expansion of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs),

(iii)
Revision of the fund- sharing pattern between the central and state governments for implementation of RTE-SSA programme from the earlier pattern in the sliding scale to a 65:35 ratio between the centre and states for a five-year period from 2010-11 to 2014-15,

(iv)
Notification of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) as the academic authority for laying down teacher qualifications,

(v)
Launching of a country-wide campaign for raising public awareness about the RTE and mobilising communities to ensure that all schools become RTE compliant.

National Programme for Education of Girls at Elementary Level (NPEGEL)

This is a focused intervention for reaching out to the hardest to reach girls. It provides additional support for enhancing girls’ education over and above the investments for girls’ education under the SSA, including gender sensitisation of teachers, development of gender-sensitive material, and provision of need-based incentives. The scheme is implemented in educationally backward blocks (EBB) where rural female literacy is low.

National Programme of Mid Day Meals in schools

Under the National Programme of Mid Day Meals in schools, cooked midday meals are provided to all children attending Classes I-VIII in government, local body, government-aided, and National Child Labour Project schools. EGCs/alternate and innovative education centres including madarsas/maqtabs supported under the SSA across the country are also covered under this programme. At present, the cooked midday meal provides an energy content of 450 calories and protein content of 12 grams at primary stage and an energy content of 700 calories and protein content of 20 grams at upper primary stage. Adequate quantity of micro-nutrients like iron, folic acid, and vitamin A are also recommended for convergence with the NRHM.

Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA)

The RMSA was launched in March 2009 with the objective of enhancing access to secondary education and improving its quality. In addition to ensuring access, the quality interventions include ensuring all secondary schools conform to prescribed norms, removing gender, socio-economic and disability barriers, providing universal access to secondary level education by 2017, i.e., by the end of the Twelfth Five Year Plan, and achieving universal retention by 2020. The Central and State governments bear 75 per cent and 25 per cent of the project expenditure respectively during the Eleventh Five Year Plan. The funding pattern is in the ratio of 90:10 for the north-eastern states.

Model Schools Scheme

A scheme for setting up 6000 model schools as benchmarks of excellence at block level with one school per block was launched in November 2008 with a view to providing quality education to talented rural children. The scheme has two modes of implementation:

(i)
3500 schools are to be set up in as many Educationally Backward Blocks (EBBs) through state/UT governments and

(ii)
The remaining 2500 schools are to be set up under PPP mode in blocks that are not educationally backward.

At present, only the first component is being implemented. The implementation of the PPP component will start from Twelfth Five Year Plan. Since the inception of the scheme, approval has been granted for setting up 1942 model schools in 22 states.

Inclusive Education for the Disabled at Secondary Stage (IEDSS)

The IEDSS scheme was launched in 2009-10 replacing the earlier Integrated Education for Disabled Children (IEDC) scheme. While inclusive education for disabled children at elementary level is being provided under the SSA, this scheme provides 100 per cent central assistance for inclusive education of disabled children studying in Classes IX-XII in mainstream government, local body, and government-aided schools. The aim of the scheme is to facilitate continuation of education of children with special needs up to higher secondary level. The scheme provides for personal requirements of the children in the form of assistive devices, helpers, transport, hostel, learning material, and scholarship for the girl child up to Rs. 3,000 per disabled child per annum. In addition, assistance is also provided for salary of special teachers, capacity building of teachers, making schools barrier free, establishment of resource rooms, and awareness and orientation.

Vocational Education

The revised centrally sponsored Vocationalisation of Secondary Education scheme aims to address the weaknesses of the earlier scheme to strengthen vocational education in Classes XI-XII. The components approved for implementation in the remaining period of the Eleventh Plan, i.e., 2011-12, include: