The plans have included special programs for the uplift of the backward classes, particularly the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. These include the following:
Post metric scholarships, students hostels, facility for special coaching of talented students from backward classes to improve their competitive capability for public services, reservation of posts in the public services and seats on medical and technical institutions, tribal development blocks, that is, a special area program for the developmentof areas with a heavy concentration of tribal people, improvement in living and working conditions of scavengers, distribution of surplus land among the landless, abolition of bonded major, allotment of house sites to the landless, programs for the gradual liquidation of indebtedness, enhancement of minimum wages for agricultural workers, imposition of penalties, under the untouchability act, for the practice of untouchability, act to artisans, rehabilitation of nomadic people and research into problems of backward classes.
Directorate of Social welfare
There have been special plan programs for the benefit of vulnerable and disadvantaged sections. Some of these are listed below:
Grants-in-aid to voluntary agencies engaged in social welfare, family and child welfare projects and condensed educational courses for adult women, holiday camps for children belonging to low income groups, maintenance of national institutions for the blind, the deaf, and the physically handicapped and mentally retarded persons, scholarships for physically handicapped persons for education and training, special employment exchanges for the placement of handicapped persons in employment, nutrition programs for children and pregnant and nursing mothers belonging to vulnerable groups, promotion of prohibition among the lower income groups which generally suffer from widespread alcoholism, provision of employment opportunities for needy women such as widows, destitute, physically handicapped women etc, hostel facilities for working women, research in technical aids for the poor and programs for the care, education, training and rehabilitation of delinquent and neglected children.
The revised 20-point program
The thrust of the 20-point program, announced by the late Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi, has been on providing better living conditions for the less privileged sections of the population. The earlier 20-point program was announced in July 1975. The Revised 20-point program announced in January 1982 takes into account the progress made in implementing the earlier program as also the economic and social developmentsthat have taken place since 1975. The program forms as integral part of the sixth plan.
Besides seeking an increase in overall production and productivity in the economy. It lays particular stress on programs designed to ameliorate the economic and social conditions of the poorer and less privileged sections of the community. This programs that directly related to this objective are: strengthening and expansion of the Integrated Rural Development and the National Rural Employment Programs.
implementation of agricultural land ceilings and distribution of surplus land: review and effective enforcement of minimum wages for agricultural labour; rehabilitation of bonded labour accelerated implementation of development programmers for scheduled castes and tribes ;supply of drinking water to all problem villages ; allotment of house sites to rural families who are without them ; improvement of slums and house building for economicallyweaker sections ; promotion of family planning on a voluntary basis ; augmentation of primary health care facilities and control of leprosy TB and blindness ; accelerated implementation of woman and child welfare programs especially in tribal hill and backward areas ; spread of universal elementary education for the 6-14 age groups with particular emphasis on girls and expansion of the public distribution system.
The plans have thus employed a comprehensive internally consistent development strategy for the realization of the basic national objectives of accelerated growth social justice and economic self reliance.
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