When Rahul Gandhi lobbies, it works. For, the day he met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh seeking implementation of a long-pending Central package for Bundelkhand, the Planning Commission was pressed into service to prepare a Cabinet note on drought-mitigation measures with a deadline to Ministries to submit their proposals by August 20.

And until that note was prepared, the Prime Minister approved Rahul’s additional demands under a “Comprehensive Package” to “completely address the problem of overdependence on agriculture, unemployment and acute shortage of drinking water”.

“The PM has already approved that the ministries concerned may expeditiously take forward the proposals to establish a 4,000 MW thermal power plant by NTPC at Lalitpur in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh; a Central agricultural university; take up proposals for repair, renovation and restoration of water bodies and artificial recharge of ground water through dug wells; to pursue the Ken Betwa Link Project; to consider an additional AIIMS-like institute; to establish a Sainik School; and, to set up a Central School in each of the 13 districts of the Bundelkhand region,” says an August 13 letter from PM’s Principal Secretary T K A Nair to Planning Commission Secretary Sudha Pillai.

“The Ministry of Rural Development has also been asked to examine the issues regarding a fresh survey of BPL households in this area and to take forward proposals for water conservation through National Rural Employment Guarantee Act,” says Nair’s letter.

What was left out is an area-based tax exemption scheme like those available in Uttarakhand, North East, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu, and an autonomous Bundelkhand Development Authority under the Centre which has been resisted by non-Congress parties in Uttar Pradesh.

... contd.