Events & Issues

New Delhi, 27 April 2016

Tall Political Promises:

DON’T TRANSLATE IN GOOD GOVERNANCE

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

The Prime Minister recently announced a drought action plan to fight acute famine across the country coupled with severe water scarcity aggravating the crisis, especially in Western and Northern India

More intriguing is that even as announcements and promises are being made very little has actually been accomplished at the grass-root level wherein villagers remain in deep distress.

Remember, at the beginning of its tenure the NDA Government talked of bringing back black money stashed in foreign banks to the country to partly solve the resource crunch facing the economy. But no initiative in this direction has been made till date even as the Government remains silent on this matter.   

An example: In the mid-day meal scheme the HRD Ministry owed States Rs 560 crores for 2015-16 as the allocation that year was only Rs 9000 crores compared to Rs 13,000 crores the previous year.

This is not all. The Ministry owes money to six States – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Jammu & Kashmir and Jharkhand – which were not paid the second installment of the mid-day meal scheme in the last financial year.

Besides, even this year the allocation of Rs 9700 crores will definitely be inadequate by over Rs 3000 crores more due to drought and water scarcity prevailing in many States.

Additionally, under pressure from the Supreme Court the Government announced release of Rs 12,930 crores of funds to States to take care of the job scheme backlog for 2015-16. Notwithstanding, the Union Rural Development Minister Birendra Singh’s assertion that the previous fiscal had seen the highest MGNREGS expenditure at Rs 41,371 crores since inception, how does this year’s allocation of Rs 38,500 crores being considered justified?

It is equally surprising why the Government ended the year with arrears of Rs 8000 crores which continue to pile up.

Recall, a few months ago the Union Finance Minister had asserted that the job scheme would be provided all financial support for its success. But the People’s Action for Employment Generation questioned the Government’s claim about record budgetary support for the scheme, claiming that it was facing a resource crunch which was quite justified.

True, while implementation of reforms in making the scheme more oriented to combat agrarian distress especially in 10 States is welcome the resources allocated for the plan looks quite meagre. More so, due to the backlog payment from the current year’s allocation.

Add to this is the Government’s recent decision to extend the entitlement from 100 to 150 days to households in drought-affected regions. Arguably, just imagine how much money would be necessary if last year’s expenditure was above Rs 41,000 crores?

It is a no-brainer that water scarcity has been increasing due to virtually no rainfall in the first four months of 2016. In the current fiscal, States have proposed to construct 8.82 lakh farm ponds and increase the irrigation potential under MGNREGS. Here again the question arises how with such relatively low allocation the scheme would cater to the increased activities?

Meanwhile, the Congress has alleged that the NDA Government slashed funds for rural sector schemes even after declaring 246 districts in ten States drought hit in 2015-16, wherein the situation was particularly bad in Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, Telengana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh.

It further accused the Modi Government of reducing funds for rural water supply from Rs 9700 crores in 2013-14 to Rs 5000 crores in the current year.

It is not known why this curtailment is being resorted to for welfare schemes which are targetted for the poor and the economically weaker sections. Remember, the Supreme Court too recently averred that even as subsidies for the poor are highlighted but various direct and indirect subsidies for the corporate sector as also their delay in loan payment have been overlooked.   

However, it was interesting to hear Prime Minister Modi underscoring in his election campaign in poll-bound States, that just modernizing cities would not help as the majority of the country’s population lived and worked in rural areas. Consequently, a dramatic improvement in their livelihood is necessary.

Towards that end he mentioned various initiatives and schemes launched by his Government. But unless there is strict monitoring and adequate resources are made available, the success of these schemes remains only in paper.

Moreover the tendency of Governments to overrule schemes of the previous administration and find faults in them need to be avoided as this gives a bad picture of the country.

This apart, it is quite apparent that the promises pertaining to education and health remain unfulfilled. While education in Government schools is in a pitiable condition, health facilities in primary health centres and sub-divisional hospitals are worse. No matter, State Governments’ talk of improving facilities, the reality is indeed highly distressing, affecting the poor and the impoverished sections.

Undeniably, our politicians are always known to make tall promises, most of which remain unkept. As a major section of the rural population is uneducated, they mostly believe the promises but in recent years these have become suspect.

The present NDA Government is no exception and announced innumerable schemes and changed names of various plans to show they had started something new. As a result, the welfare schemes, specially the job scheme started by the UPA and which has been heralded the world over has been affected due to lack of funds.  

Clearly, only talking about development initiatives and glorifying a few things that a Government has done is not enough.  There has to be statistical evaluation of the work done by an Administration in its five-year tenure and should be available on the net for public viewing.

There is also need to evolve some mechanism to make Parties accountable for the promises they make to woo voters or enhance their social image. A system has to be devised and it would be best if the judiciary takes up this responsibility. 

In sum, the wide gap between tall promises and the lack of sincerity and efficiency in Government functioning needs to be improved for efficient implementation of various programmes and schemes. The allocation of funds for specific programmes should be decided not by bureaucrats but by independent experts under the aegis of the Niti Aayog and forwarded to the Government. This should be made public so that the Administration cannot take arbitrary decisions that have only political and no social implications. ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)