Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched the Dharti Aaba Janjatiya Gram Utkarsh Abhiyan, a package for basic scheme saturation in tribal-majority villages across 550 districts, at an event in Jharkhand’s Hazaribag district, where he also laid the foundation stones for a host of other projects intended to benefit tribal people across the country.
The package, originally coined as the PM Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyan (PM-JUGA), was cleared by the Union Cabinet last month as an umbrella package to implement existing schemes in 63,000 Scheduled Tribe-majority villages.
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Jharkhand leader
Dharti Aaba is the name that many in Jharkhand use to refer to Birsa Munda, the anti-colonial tribal leader who built resistance against the British Empire in the late 19th century. Jharkhand is headed to Assembly elections later this year.
Mr. Modi said he was happy to be launching the package from “the land of Bhagwan Birsa Munda” and recalled that he had launched a similar package for the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTGs) of the country on Birsa Munda’s birth anniversary last November — the PM-JANMAN package. This showed his government’s commitment to uplifting tribal people and developing tribal societies socio-economically, he said.
Tribal development
There are 25 interventions planned under the package launched by the Prime Minister on Wednesday. An outlay of ₹79,156 crore, to be spent over five years, has been cleared by the Union Cabinet. Of this, the Central share will be ₹56,333 crore and the share of respective States will be ₹22,823 crore.
One component of the package will provide up to ₹5 lakh to tribal families to turn their houses into homestays to boost tourism, while another component involves training all rights-holders under the Forest Rights Act in sustainable agricultural practices.
Apart from this, the package aims to leverage existing schemes to build 20 lakh pucca homes for ST families, lay 25,000 km of roads connecting ST-majority villages, and bring piped water to every eligible village with a focus on 5,000 hamlets with less than 20 households each. Other components of the package aim to electrify around 2.35 lakh households and unconnected public institutions, provide 25 lakh LPG connections, bring discrimination-free broadband connectivity to 5,000 tribal villages under the BharatNet project, and set up 100 tribal multi-purpose marketing centres.
In addition, the PM also inaugurated several independent components of infrastructure projects under the PM-JANMAN package and also inaugurated 40 new Eklavya Model Residential Schools across the country.
Published - October 02, 2024 03:48 pm IST
