Swachh corpus drying up as corporates not chipping in
Contribution from private sector is a measly ₹125 cr
NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for making India clean by 2019 does not seem to have inspired corporates and individual donors to loosen their purse strings.
A special corpus set up by the government two years ago to mobilize funds for the Swachh Bharat Mission is drying up owing to lukewarm response from potential donors comprising public and private companies besides philanthropists.
Set up in September 2014, the Swachh Bharat Kosh (SBK) has so far received ₹412 crore which includes interest. Of this, the Union finance ministry that administers the fund has already sanctioned ₹382 crore to different states for implementing sanitation projects.
With corporate and PSUs shying away from making contributions, the corpus is presently left with just ₹30 crore. The paltry fund has set alarm bells ringing in the government with the governing council of SBK, headed by expenditure secretary, recently holding a meeting with corporate and PSUs to impress upon them to donate more generously.
Swachh Bharat Mission that aims to make urban and rural areas clean and open defecation free has a total outlay of ₹1.96 crore till 2019, to be shared by the Centre, states and the private sector.
Industry insiders say corporate
houses tend to spend CSR money on initiatives they patronize directly.
Veteran banker Naina Lal Kidwai, who heads the India Sanitation Coalition that FICCI under her founded 13 months ago, said that corporate houses “by and large” like to run CSR programmes on behalf of themselves.
“They are reluctant to donate to a fund where they do not have control over where the money is going. Corporates are skeptical of large central-run corpuses,” Kidwai added.
The total contribution from the private sector so far is a measly ₹125 crore. One of the biggest donor is Larsen &
Toubro with ₹60 crore contribution followed by the Bajaj group with ₹20 crore.
Spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi’s organization has donated ₹100 crore.
Over two dozen Public Sector Undertakings have donated ₹101 crore. General Insurance Corporation takes the lead among PSUs with a donation of ₹ 15 crore. Individual donors have contributed ₹6.27 lakh.
The government, too, has initiated ways to resolve the crisis. The ministry of drinking water and sanitation, which is implementing the program in rural areas has prepared a framework to engage the private sector. NEW DELHI: The Congress launched a new campaign against the RSS on Saturday alleging the saffron organization of trafficking women from Assam, a BJP-ruled state.
In a social media campaign the Congress alleged that “31 girls have been taken away from families by the RSS in flagrant violation of the existing Indian laws, judgements by the Supreme Court and international conventions on Child Rights.”
“These young girls were rescued in Delhi by Child Rights activists. But, on a dubious order from Child Welfare Committee Surendra Nagar and clear political diktat from the BJP Government, these girls were released and sent to Gujarat and Punjab,” a Congress statement said.
“To what new depths will the RSS and the BJP descend to? A painful truth has now come to light, that the RSS, through its affiliates have been trafficking girls as young as 3 years old from Assam and placing them in illegal homes in Gujarat and Punjab,” it said.
Citing a media report, the Congress said that the families were made to sign affidavits after their daughters were taken away from them, wherein they were made to lie that they were affected in the 2014 riots.
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