Scheduled Castes (SCs), who constitute 16.6% of our population as per 2011 Census, have historically suffered social, educational disabilities and economic deprivation. Special provisions have been made in the Constitution for advancement of their interests.These provisions range from:
a. measures to remove any kind of social disabilities imposed on them to ensure equality of opportunity in every sphere,
b. measures of positive discrimination to bring them on par with rest of the population.

2. The Government has taken a number of initiatives for development of SCs, which have yielded positive outcomes, and have also resulted in narrowing the gap between the Scheduled Castes and the rest of the population. However, the focus of most welfare Schemes of SCs has been mainly centred on individual beneficiaries rather than on the integrated development of SC pockets.

3. To enable an area based development approach a new scheme namely Pradhan Mantri Adarsh Gram Yojana (PMAGY), was launched on Pilot basis during 2009-10. The Scheme aims at integrated development of villages in which the population of Scheduled Castes is above 50%. A total of 1000 villages from Tamil Nadu (225), Rajasthan (225), Bihar (225), Himachal Pradesh (225) and Assam (100) were selected for the Pilot phase of the Scheme. So far total 617 villages has been declared as ‘Adarsh Gram’. During 2014-15, PMAGY was further extended (Phase-I) to cover another 1500 villages across 11 States namely Andhra Pradesh (7), Assam (75), Chhattisgarh (175), Jharkhand (100), Haryana (12), Karnataka (201), Madhya Pradesh (327), Odisha (175), Punjab (162), Telangana (6) and Uttar Pradesh (260).

4. In light of the benefits accruing to the residents of the villages through successful implementation of the Scheme, it was decided to expand the scheme as Phase-II to take up more villages. All those districts have been considered which have villages having total population ≥500 and with more than 50% persons belonging to the Scheduled Castes. Up to 10 such villages in descending order of SC population has been selected from each such district for implementation of the Scheme. Thus 4484 villages has now been taken up for coverage under the Scheme.

5. Under the revised Scheme identification of needs or Gaps with regard to the 50 Monitorable Indicators covering 10 major domains will be based on a Need Assessment exercise. Village Development Plan (VDP) will be based on the data collected as part of the Need Assessment exercise. The Scheme relies heavily on convergence with other initiatives of the Central and State Governments for ensuring that the minimum infrastructure and critical services are made available to all the persons in the village, especially those belonging to the Scheduled Castes.

6. The Scheme further aims to saturate 50 numbers of identified socio-economic indicators, known as Monitorable Indicators, so that the disparity between SC and non-SC population is eliminated and the level of indicators is raised to at least that of the National average.

These Monitorable Indicators are distributed in ten domains which are listed below:
1. Drinking water and Sanitation
2. Education
3. Health and Nutrition
4. Social Security
5. Rural Roads and Housing
6. Electricity and Clean Fuel
7. Agricultural Practices etc.
8. Financial Inclusion
9. Digitization
10. Livelihood and Skill Development

Prize:
The Designer of the finally selected Logo will get a prize of Rs 25,000/- (Rupees Twenty Five Thousand) only.

The last date for accepting entries is 01-03-2019 at 05:00 PM.

Click here to read Terms and Condition

For any contest related queries, write to:
Deepak Kumar Sah
Under Secretary
Department of Social Justice and Empowerment
Email: sahdk.68@nic.in
Office: 011-23383688