In recent times there have been several very impressive claims by the union government regarding its very strong commitment to various welfare programs. However at the same time we cannot ignore that equally strong criticisms questioning these claims have also been voiced. As a lot of statistics are often quoted in support of claims as well as criticisms, people are often left confused regarding what is the real situation.
https://countercurrents.org/2022/07/welfare-programs-is-the-glass-half-full-or-half-empty/
If a question is asked regarding who have been the poorest of the poor in Indian society, then probably a large number of people will agree that those households who were or have been engaged in manual scavenging constitute the poorest of the poor. Hence clearly they deserve the most generous support from the government for improving their condition. Keeping this in view a self-employment scheme for providing alternative livelihoods to them was started by the Government of India and there were high hopes from this scheme.
The claim of the Government is that it has allocated Rs. 1255 crore during the period 2014-15 to 2021-22 for this scheme. This claim when highlighted alongside a photo of a beaming woman who has left manual scavenging to become a shopkeeper with the support of this scheme cheers us up and we thank the government for fulfilling the society’s obligation towards the poorest of the poor.
However if we take care to check with critics they will tell us that in fact out of the total allocation of around Rs. 1255 crore for this scheme only Rs. 236 crore was actually spent or utilized. In other words, for this high-priority scheme meant for the welfare of the poorest of the poor, only 19% of the funds allocated were actually utilized. This happened when social activists working on this issue were repeatedly drawing attention to the several pressing needs of these households.
by Bharat Dogra
25/07/2022