Planning Commission to delink tribal welfare from security

• The Planning Commission has decided to disown the Integrated Action Plan (IAP) for Selected Tribal and Backward Districts that it authored and was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) — in a vastly amended form — in November last.
• Currently being implemented in 60 Left wing extremist (LWE)-affected districts, the plan was watered down by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) before it received the CCEA nod. 
• The Commission-designed IAP architecture was also intended to simultaneously exert pressure on the State governments to perform, while involving panchayats to increase the participation of the local population. So, a certain amount of money was to be given to the panchayats through the Backward Regions Grant Fund. The larger chunk was to be routed through a Chief Secretary-headed administrative committee at the State level, which would consider requests from the districts and disburse monies on the basis of needs and performance.
• The scheme now being implemented has snipped off the panchayats altogether, while replacing the State-level committee with a district-level panel headed by the District Collector and including the Superintendent of Police and District Forest Officer as members. When the Commission raised objections to the changes, the MHA said the plan was "too complicated" and wanted to know why it did not trust the district officials. The Commission's view was that the pressure should be on the States: "Clearly, it is the failure of district officials that has led to the current crisis," the Commission sources said.
• The CCEA-approved scheme has also done away with the Commission's desire to impose conditionalities — to make continued flow of funds dependent on performance. For instance, the Commission wanted that in the first year, the IAP funds should be utilised to make the existing systems work, to put the non-functioning Public Distribution System, schools, public health centres, Integrated Child Development Services back on stream, and subsequently to ensure the implementation of the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayat Extension to the Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act.