The State Government might have gone ahead with its ambitious plan to provide buses to ply in rural areas of the State under the ‘Stand Up India’ programme, but it has no clue to the fate of a similar project launched some 15 years back.
Under the scheme launched soon after the formation of Jharkhand, the State’s Welfare department had given 719 vehicles with similar motives to the youths. It had a provision for subsidy up to 90 per cent for the rural youths coming from marginalised sections.
When contacted, Tribal Welfare Commissioner Gauri Shankar Minz searching into old files with him could hardy recall the status of the buses given to the unemployed youths of Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes.
“The scheme came way back during 2001-02 when Babulal Marandi was the Chief Minister. Total 579 buses were given to STs while 140 were given to the SCs on 90 per cent subsidy. But the Department has no latest information about the condition of those buses. I am not sure whether the buses are still plying or not,” said the Commissioner.
The idea behind launching the scheme was to make the youths of the weaker sections earn their livelihood through the rural bus service which in addition to that would have improved transportation facilities in the rural areas as well. The then Government had offered subsidy as hefty as 90 per cent of the cost of the bus and the beneficiaries had to pay back just the rest 10 per cent.
“As per records, cost of one bus was about Rs 6 lakh at that time. Even though the Government had given 90 per cent cost in the form of subsidy, very little amount was to be paid back. They could not even run the buses properly perhaps due to the model adopted for the scheme,” added Minz.
Nature of the scheme was such that as many as 10 youths coming from the sections together had first to form a cooperative and apply for the bus. A bank account in the name of one person of the group was to be opened for the transactions to be made.
“This was one of the main reasons why the scheme flopped. The rest of the members often defaulted and did not cooperate in paying back the Government. Also, irregularities creeped in while distributing the earnings among themselves. After some time, the scheme was satirically earned name of ‘poultry bus’ due to so many heads meddling together,” said an official of the Welfare Department.
Taking a lesson out of the earlier scheme, the Government this time has handed it over to the Transport Department and eliminated concept of group along with sweeteners like road tax waiver and permit at token Re 1.
Also, bankers have been roped in by linking the scheme under the Centre’s ‘Standup India’ programme which aims to make SC, ST and women financially self reliant by offering easy loans between Rs 10 lakh and 1 crore. The State Government has identified 364 routes for the buses under the scheme.