Jairam asks corporates to fund livelihood foundation

Ramesh said he had written to Tata,Reliance,Infosys and Wipro for help in putting together Rs 500 crore which will be used for generating livelihoods in 170 tribal districts of the country. The Finance Ministry has already made an allocation for creating a corpus for the remaining amount of Rs 500 crore.

Ramesh,who was at the NABARD headquarters in Mumbai,said that 78 of these districts are in the Naxal heartland of the country. In addition to the top corporates,Ramesh has also written to the National Dairy Development Board asking them to be a part of the foundation.

He said the foundation will be an independent body of about six to eight well-known professionals and government representatives. It will be chaired on similar lines as the Public Health Foundation of India which has Infosys founder NR Narayan Murthy as its chairperson. Ramesh said a meeting of prospective donors,NGOs and the state government is slated to be held on April 27. The foundation will lend not to the states but directly to the civil society organisations for its various capacity building measures, said Ramesh.

These include NGOs working in the field of watershed management,sustainable livelihoods such as agriculture,fisheries or dairy and womens empowerment. He added that for the donors,the money spent be part of their corporate social responsibility as also decide the number of representatives each get to have in the foundation.

The foundation will help in scaling up civil society initiatives in the tribal belts in partnership with NABARD. In addition to projects of livelihood generation in tribal areas affected by left-wing extremism,the apex development bank will also help promote womens self help groups in rural India.