Patna, June 2: Replacing revenue village as the basic unit with habitations (tolas); moving from the regime of scheme-based planning to that based on entitlement and replacing mainstreaming with broad-streaming are the three focus areas of the state government for realising the goal of “inclusive growth”.

The state put forth these points in the form of suggestions that it submitted to the Planning Commission during the two-day regional consultation process held here on May 30 and 31. The purpose of the exercise was to collect inputs for charting out the approach paper for the Twelfth Plan.

“We want to make habitations (tolas) the basic unit of planning. This is because while taking revenue village as the planning unit, the primary focus remains on the mainland of the village but the habitations in the periphery, which consist mainly of weaker sections, remain deprived. The change in the system would address this issue,” principal secretary, planning and development, Vijoy Prakash told The Telegraph.

Revenue villages are at the bottom of the administrative division. But one revenue village has several tolas (habitations), which are situated on the periphery area of the main village. People of the marginalised classes generally settle in these tolas.

In the case of Bihar, while there are 44,874 revenue villages in the state, the number of tolas is estimated to be more than a lakh. The government has decided to conduct a survey to find out the exact number of tolas. “If the commission accepts our suggestions for making tolas the basic unit of planning for other states as well it is okay, else Bihar would introduce this shift once the survey work is complete,” Prakash said.

Sharing details about the entitlement-based planning, a report on which The Telegraph had published on April 25, the principal secretary said it would help the states ensure universal coverage through standardisation of norms as well as promoting social and regional equality.

Citing an example, he said, “Say, if there is a norm to have one primary health centre (PHC) for every one lakh population, the planning would be done in a way which would ensure that for every one lakh population there is one PHC in place.”

Under the existing system, planning is done based on schemes. Under this, plans are chalked out for different schemes and allocation to states by the Centre is given on this basis. Developed states garner a good chunk of the plan money due to better infrastructure, which allows them to have a better absorption capacity of funds compared to under-developed states with poor infrastructure.

Bihar has already decided to shift to entitlement-based planning. The state will release funds to the districts on the basis of entitlement under four broad categories — individual, family, insti- tutional and area. All districts will have to submit their individual plans based on entitlements under different categories according to which funds would be released.

Prakash also said the government feels “broad-streaming” would help reach out to the marginalised sections. He said broad-streaming meant giving equal importance to lifestyle, practices, vocation etc of marginalised communities as compared to that of the mainstream community.

“In a nutshell one can say that broad-streaming would introduce a system where schemes would be made in accordance with the needs of the people,” he said.