NEW DELHI, MAR 1: Alarmed at not being informed of Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha's grand desire to implement an Education Guarantee Scheme (EGS), as announced in the Budget on Saturday, the Planning Commission has shot off a letter to the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) asking why they were kept in the dark about it. The scheme which is modelled on Madhya Pradesh's successful EGS aims to provide an elementary school in every habitation which does not have one in the radius of one kilometre and promises that at least 1.8 lakh such schools will become operational during the next three years of the Ninth Plan. But neither the Finance Ministry nor the HRD Ministry has been able to provide an estimate of the cost that will be incurred or where the funds will come from.In his speech, Sinha left this part vague, saying ``resources available under the existing Centrally-sponsored education schemes will be mobilised to support this important initiative''. But the facts are that the PlanningCommission is yet to receive a single document on this from the HRD Ministry.The Planning Commission has now asked for a meeting to actually start working out the scheme. It will also seek to clarify how this EGS is different from the Non-Formal Education (NFE) scheme which has in been in existence since the Sixth Plan. While MP's EGS also funds non-formal schools, the FM seems unaware that it is different from formal schools, although he makes a vague statement in the speech that ``after the school has functioned successfully for two years, it will be upgraded on a permanent basis''.
