Notwithstanding the Janata Dal (United) deciding to support the United Progressive Alliance’s presidential candidate Pranab Mukherjee, the Centre is not letting the Bihar government, led by Mr Nitish Kumar, off the hook over governance issue and has asked the state to tone up administration in implementing anti-poverty programmes, including women and child development.
With the depressing data on poverty coming from the state, as almost half of Bihar lives below poverty line (BPL), the planning commission, at its meeting with the chief minister, asserted on the need to give “topmost priority” in creating “livelihood opportunities” for the people in both rural and urban areas of the state.
Maintaining that in some cases the state lacks institutional framework to implement schemes, the plan panel, in a status note on the state, a copy of which is with this newspaper, suggested creating departments and also recruiting personnel at key position for effective implementation of schemes at grass-root level.
Highlighting the loopholes in implementing schemes for women and children, the panel rued that the programmes having an allocation of `2,118 crore for their development are “still being looked after by the social welfare department”.
The status note said, “Since the plan proposals carry a separate chapter on women and child development with all the schemes and programmes intended for them, the state should establish a separate department dealing with the subject to ensure better planning, implementation and monitoring of the schemes.”
Reminding the state government that there are a large number of vacant posts of supervisors under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the status note suggested the state government should hasten the process of filling up those posts for smooth function and monitoring of the scheme.
Raising concern over drop in the under six-child sex ratio in the state to 933 girl in 2011 census from 942 girl on every 1,000 boys in 2001, the plan panel has asked the state “to analyse the causes for decline and address the problem”.