100 days, billion hopes: UPA agenda

New Delhi: President Pratibha Patil on Thursday outlined the priorities of the new Government for the next 100 days. Prominent among them being a slew of women development plans including the long-pending Women Reservation Bill.

Ensuring accountability in implementation of public welfare schemes, including the NREGA is also on top of the agenda. Following is a summary of what the Government has on its 100-day list.

• Early passage of the Women's Reservation Bill providing for one-third reservation to women in state legislatures and in Parliament.
• Constitutional amendment to provide 50 percent reservation for women in panchayats and urban local bodies.
• Concerted effort to increase representation of women in central government jobs.
• A National Mission on Empowerment of Women for implementation of women-centric programmes in a mission mode to achieve better coordination.
• A voluntary national youth corps which could take up creative social action for river cleaning and beautification programme beginning with the Ganga.
• Restructuring the Backward Regions Grant Fund, which overlaps with other development investment, to focus on decentralised planning and capacity building of elected panchayat representatives. The next three years would be devoted to training panchayati raj functionaries in administering flagship programmes.
• A public data policy to place all information covering non-strategic areas in the public domain.
• Increasing transparency and public accountability of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) by enforcing social audit and ensuring grievance redressal by setting up district level ombudsmen.
• Strengthening Right to Information Act by suitably amending the law to provide for disclosure by government in all non-strategic areas.
• Strengthening public accountability of flagship programmes by the creation of an Independent Evaluation Office at an arm's distance from the government catalysed by the Planning Commission.
• Establishing mechanisms for performance monitoring and performance evaluation in government on a regular basis.
• Five annual reports to be presented by government as Reports to the People on Education, Health, Employment, Environment and Infrastructure to generate a national debate.
• Facilitating a voluntary technical corps of professionals in all urban areas through Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission to support city development activities.
• Enabling non government organisations in the area of development action seeking government support through a web-based transaction on a government portal in which the status of the application will be transparently monitorable.
• Provisions of scholarships and social security schemes through accounts in post offices and banks and phased transition to smart cards.
• Revamping of banks and post offices to become outreach units for financial inclusion complemented by business correspondents aided by technology.
• Electronic governance through Bharat Nirman common service centres in all panchayats in the next three years.
• A model Public Services Law, that covers functionaries providing important social services like education, health, rural development etc and commits them to their duties, will be drawn up in consultations with states.
• A National Council for Human Resources in Health as an overarching regulatory body for the health sector to reform the current regulatory framework and enhance supply of skilled personnel.
• A National Council for Higher Education as recommended by the Yashpal Committee and the National Knowledge Commission to bring in reform of regulatory institutions.
• Develop a "brain gain" policy to attract talent from all over the world into the 14 universities proposed in the 11th plan to position them as "innovation universities".
• A roadmap for judicial reform to be outlined in six months and implemented in a time-bound manner.
• Targeted identification cards would subsume and replace omnibus Below Poverty Line (BPL) list. NREGA has a job card and the proposed Food Security Act would also create a new card.
• A Delivery Monitoring Unit in the prime minister's office (PMO) to monitor flagship programmes and iconic projects and report on their status publicly.
• Suitably institutionalised quarterly reporting on flagship programmes as "Bharat Nirman Quarterly Reports" where ministers would publicly report on programmes through the media.