Jairam for people-centric approach to fight Maoism

Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh on Friday said that the government is working on a multi pronged people centric strategy to deal with Maoist violence in the country.

Inaugurating the All India Editors´ conference on Social Sector issues, he said, only police centric response to deal with the biggest internal security challenge is not going to succeed.

He said, "The Maoist menace can be taken head on by addressing the developmental concerns of the tribals, besides increasing the intensity of political activity."

Giving the example of Junglemahal area in West Bengal, where intense political activity has forced the Maoists to take a back seat, Jairam said people-centric welfare measures and better and sensitive administrative mechanisms are other necessary ways to deal with the naxal challenge, besides resorting to security measures through police and para-military forces.

Dwelling in detail on the problems in dealing with Naxal violence, which has taken deep roots in 78 districts of the country, Ramesh said, failure of politics and development were the reasons for the upsurge in violence.

He said, "The centre will be redesigning and restructuring the rural development programmes and will make them more sensitive to the needs of the common man and particularly the tribal community."

Jairam said that he is working on the institutionalization of the Concurrent Evaluation Network through the NGOs and research institutes at the Central and State level to get the regular feedback about the implementation of rural development schemes on the ground level.

He said that the Ministry has already decided to open all rural schemes to CAG audit to bring about greater accountability and transparency.

Jairam said that he is also planning to give more flexibility to the state governments and his target is that by 2017, the states will prioritize about 50 percent of all the rural schemes spending, besides enhancing the importance of neglected sectors like drinking water supply and sanitation.

Speaking on the occasion, the Union Minister of State in the Prime Minister´s office, V.Narayansamy said, a foolproof mechanism must be evolved to check the leakages in the implementation of the central schemes by the State governments.

The Chief Minister of Puducherry N.Rangaswamy highlighted the various developmental measures initiated in the state for the welfare of the people.

He expressed hope that the two-day deliberations will focus upon constructive schemes and decisions on social infrastructure facilities in a full-fledged manner.

The Principal D.G of Press Information Bureau, Neelam Kapur said, the conference on Social Sector issues will provide an important opportunity to the representatives of the small and medium newspapers to interact with the policy makers.

She said, "The UPA government is implementing a large number of social sector programmes spanning various Ministries, which should be highlighted by the media so that the common man can reap their benefits.