"We welcome all NRIs who want to join the social justice movement"
Interview with Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Mr Thawar Chand Gehlot Taking time out from Parliament, Cabinet Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Mr Thawar Chand Gehlot spoke to Editor and Publisher Sayantan Chakravarty and spelt out the challenges before him in the coming months
Please let us know about the vision of the Ministry, both short term and long term...
The vision of our Ministry is to cater to scheduled castes, backward classes, handicapped class, transgender, nomads and senior citizens. If we calculate their population, it comes out to be around 70 crore. It also involves education of the children of these castes and tribes. Mainly, we look forward to providing facility of education to the children of these tribes. In order to keep the students from dropping out of school we provide both pre-metric as well as post-metric scholarships. Also, we provide financial aid for higher studies of the students. We mostly support compulsory and system education so that the children do not drop out of school because of financial crisis. Secondly, these classes are also lagging behind on the socio-economic front, which is why they have been put in these categories. To uplift these classes we need to provide them proper education, proper physical, mental and psychological facility. Keeping this in view, we provide them with proper medical services and training and accordingly provide all the necessary facilities required by them. From the financial point of view, we have set up Financial Development Corporations like Schedule caste Financial Development Corporation, Backward Classes Financial Development Corporation and so on. So, with the medium of these financial development corporations we provide them loan at 5 -6 per cent per annum. This helps them in starting their own business. We provide training to these classes and try to make them competent enough to get a job, for the same we collaborate with the states, as well as with NGOs, and make them employable.
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