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Recently, the Union Social Justice Ministry received 402 applications online from across the country for benefits under the Scheme for Economic Empowerment of Denotified, Nomadic, Semi-nomadic (SEED) Tribes.
The De-notified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes
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Key Points
- No Approval:
- None of the applications received so far on the SEED’s online portal has been approved yet.
- Delay in Implementation:
- The exercise to categorise all 1,400 communities under the Scheduled Caste, Scheduled Tribe and Other Backward Classes is holding up the implementation of the scheme.
- Latest Estimates:
- More than 10 crore Indians from 1,400 communities belong to these groups, show the latest estimates available with the government.
Scheme for Economic Empowerment of Denotified, Nomadic, Semi-nomadic (SEED) Tribes
- Aim:
- The scheme aims to provide free competitive exam coaching to students, health insurance and financial assistance for housing and uplift clusters of these communities through livelihood initiatives.
- 4 components:
- To provide coaching of good quality for DNT candidates to enable them to appear in competitive examinations.
- To provide Health Insurance to them.
- To facilitate livelihood initiative at community level; and
- To provide financial assistance for construction of houses for members of these communities.
- Budget:
- The Ministry has been allocated ?200 crore for this scheme to be spent over five financial years from 2021-22 to 2025-26.
- Implementation:
- The Scheme will be implemented through a portal, developed by the Department of Social Justice & Empowerment.
- The portal consists of two modules:
- One module for registration of the applicant with details of his family, income, occupation, aadhar and bank details, caste certificate, etc.
- The second part consists of the scheme component for which the applicant wants to seek benefit with his UID as Login id and his mobile as his password.
- The portal will create a permanent database and can be retrieved whenever the applicant desires to enroll for a new component.
- The funds will be transferred directly to the beneficiaries in their account. The other implementing agencies are the Ministry of Rural Development, National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM) and National Health Authority (NHA).
Issues
- Inconsistencies: While the Anthropological Survey of India (AnSI) and Tribal Research Institutes are studying 267 uncategorised communities to classify them under SC, ST, or OBC, inconsistencies have been hindering the processing of SEED applications.
- Inaccuracies:
- The categorisation of these communities by the Idate Commission left room for inaccuracies as outlined by the commission in its 2018 report.
- For instance, some communities such as the Banjara were under the SC list in Delhi, the ST list in Rajasthan and the OBC list in Uttar Pradesh.
- The commission said some communities were under different lists in different districts even within a State.
Way Ahead
- The categorisation of DNTs, NTs and SNTs is essential for the implementation of SEED because there is no schedule in the Constitution providing for their reservation.
- The Idate Commission in its report had first recommended that a separate schedule be created for these communities so that they can avail benefits meant for them.
- In case this was not possible, the commission had recommended sub-categorisation of DNTs/NTs/SNTs under the existing schedules for SC, ST, and OBC communities so they are not crowded out by relatively better-placed communities.
Various Committees Set up for Empowerment of DNTs
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Source: TH
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