Chapter: Gist of Press Information Bureau Articles

Topic: Backward Regions Grant Fund

Q. What is BACKWARD REGIONS GRANT FUND?

• The Backward Regions Grant Fund Programme (BRGF), launched by the Prime Minister at Barpeta in Assam on 19th February 2007, signifies a new approach to addressing persistent regional imbalances in development by way of providing financial resources for supplementing and converging existing developmental inflows into the identified backward districts.

• The programme subsumed the Rashtriya Sama Vikas Yojana (RSVY), a scheme earlier being administered by the Planning Commission. The BRGF Programme covers 250 districts in 27 States, of which 232 districts fall under the purview of Parts IX and IX- A of the Constitution dealing with the Panchayats and the Municipalities, respectively. The remaining 18 districts are covered by other local government structures, such as Autonomous District and Regional Councils under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution and state specific arrangements as in the case of Nagaland and the hill areas of Manipur.

• The BRGF programme represents a major shift in approach from top-down plans to participative plans prepared from the grassroots level upwards.

• The guidelines of the Programme entrust the central role in planning and implementation of the programme to Panchayats in rural areas, municipalities in urban areas and District Planning Committees at the district level constituted in accordance with Article 243 ZD of the Constitution to consolidate the plans of the Panchayats and Municipalities into the draft district plan. Special provisions have been made in the guidelines for those districts in J&K, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura which do not have Panchayats, where village level bodies and institutions mandated under other frameworks such as the Sixth Schedule are to plan and implement the programme.

Q. Which features of BRGF make it unique?

There are three features of BRGF that make it truly unique among central initiatives to combat backwardness.

• First, the approach of putting the Panchayats and the Municipalities at the centre stage of planning and implementation.

• Second, no Central funding stream is as ‘untied’ as the BRGF – the funds can be applied to any preference of the Panchayats/ Municipality, so long as it fills a development gap and the identification of the work is decided with people’s participation.

• Third, no other programme spends as much funds, nearly 11 percent of the total allocation, for capacity building and staff provisioning.

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