Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on July 23 announced that the Union government will launch the PM – Janjatiya Unnat Gram Abhiyaan with an aim at achieving full saturation of basic facilities among five crore Scheduled Tribe families across 63,000 villages in tribal-majority areas and aspirational districts.

The scheme, designed after the PM-JANMAN to achieve saturation of basic facilities for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, will be for Scheduled Tribe populations across the country, the Finance Minister said in her Budget (2024-25) speech on July 23, without going into the details for how much funds are being set aside for this or how this package would be implemented or overseen.

Tribal Affairs Minister Jual Oram hailed the announcement of the “transformative scheme”, expressing gratitude, adding in a social media post that it would “uplift the socio-economic conditions of tribal communities”.

Top officials of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs have not yet responded to questions about how this new package would work.

This came as the government allocated ₹13,000 crore in the Budget Estimate (24-25) for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which showed an increase of 4.31% compared to BE 23-24 even as the Revised Estimate for FY 23-24 had been pegged at ₹7,605 crore.

The last available Actual Expenditure for the FY 2022-23 showed that the Ministry had spent a total of ₹7,273.53 crore.

More than half of the Tribal Affairs Ministry’s allocation in this year’s Budget Estimates (24-25) – ₹6,399 crore – has gone to the scheme for Eklavya Model Residential Schools for tribal students. Ministry sources explained that this increase was largely owing to the management of the schools being brought under the Centre from 2023-24 onwards.

Marginal rise in Social Justice budget

Meanwhile, the Budget Estimate (2024-25) for the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment showed an allocation of ₹14,225.47 crore, which is 1.08% more than what the government had allocated in the Budget Estimate (2023-24). This came as the government pegged the Revised Estimate (2023-24) for the entire Ministry at ₹11.078.33 crore.

This marginal increase in the allocation for the Ministry was largely concentrated in the Department of Social Justice and Empowerment, with the allocation for the Department of Empowerment of Persons with Disabilities barely changing.

Scholarships rejigged

In the detailed Budget documents put out later in the day, the Budget Estimate for 2024-25 showed that the National Fellowship for OBC students was allocated ₹55 crore compared to ₹57 crore in BE(2023-24) even though the Revised Estimate (23-24) was at ₹90 crore for the scheme.

The Budget documents also showed that the allocation under Interest Subsidy on Overseas Studies for OBC and EBC students had decreased from ₹29 crore in BE(23-24) to ₹25 crore in BE (24-25) – significantly lower than the government’s Revised Estimate (23-24) for spending under this component, which stood at ₹60 crore.  

This decline was owing to a revision in the scholarship rates, which were brought in last year, officials explained. “Because the fellowship allocation comes from the Standing Finance Committee for every five-year period and this revision was brought in between, the current allocation reflects what was left out of the ₹400 crore allocated for the five-year period beginning 2021-22,” one official said.

They added that the Revised Estimate for FY 24-25 will be able to accommodate the demand for this scheme after the SFC reconvenes sometime in August this year.

Similarly, under transfers to States and UTs, the Union government allocated less than the previous year for pre and post-matric scholarships to OBCs, Extremely Backward Classes, and Denotified Tribes, which officials said was done to make room for the consequent increase in the allocation under components for scholarships under Top Class Colleges and Schools for these communities.

The pre-matric scholarship scheme for OBCs, EBCs, and DNTs saw an allocation of Rs 210 crore in BE(24-25) compared to ₹281 crore in BE(23-24). And in the post-matric scholarship scheme for this group, the allocation in BE(24-25) dropped to ₹921 crore from ₹1,087 crore in BE(23-24).

In contrast, the Top Class College scheme’s allocation was increased from ₹90 crore in BE (23-24) to ₹515 crore in this year’s Budget Estimate whereas, the allocation for Top Class Schools rose to ₹150 crore from ₹100 crore in BE(23-24).  

Slight boost for NAMASTE

In addition, it was revealed that the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) scheme for the eradication of manual sewer cleaning altogether was allocated ₹116.94 crore – a marginal increase compared to the allocation of ₹97 crore in BE(2023-24).

However, it was also revealed that in FY 23-24, the government’s Revised Estimate under the scheme has been pegged at just ₹30.06 crore.