NEW DELHI: The Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellows (PMRDF) scheme was former firebrand Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh’s brainchild and was announced with huge fanfare during the UPA days. But now, the scheme is going nowhere with the NDA government not giving the green signal for further recruitment.
PMRDF was announced in September 2011 and every two years, 140 graduates were selected for a three-year fellowship. They were to oversee better delivery of flagship programmes in backward and remote districts. It had the twin objective of providing short-term catalytic support to district administrations to improve the effectiveness of development programmes and to develop a cadre of development facilitators, who would be available as a ready resource for rural development activities over a long term.
“There is more than a year’s delay in calling for applications. It is a policy decision, and it has to come from the top. It is in limbo,’’ said an official with the Ministry of Rural Development. The ministry usually calls for PMRDF applications every alternative year. The last call was made in 2014.
It is understood that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reservations about the scheme and has asked for details of all PMRDF fellows who have passed out in two batches. There is also a thinking within the ministry whether the scheme is worth the `36 crore that it needs every year to train and pay the graduates.
Tata Institute for Social Sciences was responsible for selecting and training PMRDF fellows. “The Rural Development ministry will have to take a call, and there is some delay. Earlier, there was talk of rebranding it and a report was also sought,’’ said one of the professors in charge of PMRDF.