Brief Background:

1. Scheduled Castes (SCs), who constitute 16.6% of our population as per 2011 Census, have historically suffered social and educational disabilities and economic deprivation arising therefrom. Accordingly, special provisions have been enshrined in the Constitution for advancement of their interests. These provisions range from measures to remove any kind of social disabilities imposed on them to ensure equality of opportunity in every sphere, to measures of positive discrimination to bring them on par with rest of the population.

2. Article 46 of Part IV ("Directive Principles of State Policy") of the Constitution enjoins upon the State to promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes. Article 38 (2) in the same Part also enjoins upon the State to minimize inequities in income, and to endeavour to eliminate inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.

3. The Government has hence taken a number of initiatives for development of SCs, which have yielded positive outcomes, and have also resulted in narrowing the gap between the Scheduled Castes and the rest of the population. However, the focus of most welfare Schemes of SCs has been mainly cantered on individual beneficiaries rather than on the integrated development of SC pockets.

4. To enable an area based development approach, a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY) was launched on a Pilot basis during 2009-10, following the Finance Minister’s declaration in his Budget Speech delivered on 6.7.2009. The Scheme aims at integrated development of villages in which the population of Scheduled Castes is above 50%. A total of 1000 villages from Tamil Nadu (225), Rajasthan (225), Bihar (225), Himachal Pradesh (225) and Assam (100) were selected for the Pilot phase. Under this phase total Rs. 201 crore was released to the States. All the 1000 villages has been declared as Adarsh Gram.

5. During 2014-15, PMAGY was further extended (Phase-I) to cover another 1500 villages across 11 States namely Andhra Pradesh (7), Assam (75), Chhattisgarh (175), Jharkhand (100), Haryana (12), Karnataka (201), Madhya Pradesh (327), Odisha (175), Punjab (162), Telangana (6) and Uttar Pradesh (260). Funding for these villages started during March 2015 and continued till 2019-20. Total 346.85 cr were released to the States as Central Share. Till date States have declared 149 villages as Adarsh Gram and remaining villages are slotted for declaration as Adarsh by 31-03-2021.

Expansion of the Scheme:

6. In light of the benefits accruing to the residents of the villages through successful implementation of the Scheme, it has been decided in 2018-19 to take up more villages as Phase-II of the Scheme. All those districts are considered which have villages having total population ≥500 and with more than 50% persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes. The villages in descending order of SC population are proposed to be selected from each such district for implementation of the Scheme in this new Phase. The Government of India is planning to cover all the eligible 26968 villages by the end of 2014-25.

Objectives of the Scheme:

1. The objective of this Scheme is to ensure integrated development of the selected villages with more than 50% SC population so that, inter alia, there is:

   (a) Adequate Infrastructure: All requisite infrastructure necessary for the socio-economic development needs are to be provided under the Scheme.
   (b) Improvement in Socio-Economic Indicators The identified socio-economic indicators, known as Monitorable Indicators, are to be improved so that the disparity between SC and non-SC population is eliminated and the level of indicators is raised to at least that of the National average. More specifically, all BPL SC families should have food and livelihood security, all SC children should complete education at least up to the secondary level, all factors leading to maternal and infant mortality are addressed and incidence of malnutrition, especially amongst children and women, is eliminated.
   

2. The particulars of the 50 Monitorable Indicators under 10 domains are listed in the next para. These 10 domains are:
   i) Drinking water and Sanitation
   ii) Education
   iii) Health and Nutrition
   iv) Social Security
   v) Rural Roads and Housing
   vi) Electricity and Clean Fuel
   vii) Agricultural Practices etc.
   viii) Financial Inclusion
   ix) Digitization
   x) Livelihood and Skill Development