The Finance Ministry has now directed State-level and Union Territory-level Bankers’ Committees to mandatorily include data on the percentage share of Scheduled Caste beneficiaries availing flagship Central schemes such as the Mudra Yojana, Stand Up India , Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme, MSME/business loans, and others.
This direction comes after the National Commission for Scheduled Castes flagged the fact that these bankers’ committees were not reporting this data for a number of government schemes in their regular reviews, which was hindering the Commission’s ability to perform its Constitutional duties. The advisory also asked the bankers’ committees to ensure that this information is shared regularly with the Commission. In this letter, the NCSC noted that such data was missing for the Pradhan Mantri Mudra Yojana, Stand-Up India, Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme, PM SVANidhi (Street Vendors’ scheme), Credit Guarantee Fund Trust for Micro and Small Enterprises, and MSME business loans. The Commission noted that its State Office representatives have been attending the bankers’ committee review meetings regularly to monitor the financial inclusion of SC families, as per its Constitutional mandate.
Housing funds for SC/ST beneficiaries to be given directly: Minister In a letter dated October 5, the Department of Financial Services of the Union Finance Ministry wrote to all State Level Bankers’ Committees (SLBCs) and Union Territory Level Bankers’ Committees (UTLBCs), asking them to include the percentage of SC beneficiaries for all the schemes flagged by the NCSC in their periodic reviews – both scheme-wise and bank-wise. The DFS has now asked all SLBCs and UTLBCs to submit an action-taken report on the advisory issued to them by October 9, saying that any issues related to the availability of data should be flagged by this time. Because the bankers’ committees keep saying they do not have disaggregated data, “This has not been possible for the Commission in recent times.
Noting the absence of data on SC beneficiaries, the NCSC said, “It becomes very difficult for the Commission to review the performance of Banks, i.e. whether they have been extending help to the SC families as per the Constitutional mandate or not. Sources aware of these developments told The Hindu that in reviewing the banks’ performance, the Commission routinely checks whether the share of SC beneficiaries in these government schemes is as close as possible to the share of their communities in the population. This is why the Commission wrote to the DFS,” one government official said. The bankers’ committees have further been told by the government to be prepared for an update on the action taken in a month’s time.
