Sachar member laments low spending on Muslims' welfare
Vidya Subrahmaniam | The Hindu | April 3, 2010
Keywords: Sachar Committee, Muslims, Ministry of Minority Affairs
Abusaleh Shariff, member-secretary of the Rajinder Sachar Committee on the status of Muslims, is angry and upset. He thinks the United Progressive Alliance government has not done enough to push the cause of Muslims' welfare.
Talking to The Hindu, Dr. Shariff said: “It is more than three years since the Committee's report established the pitiable socio-economic status of Indian Muslims. I am saddened and depressed that in all this time there has been more talk about Sachar than action.”
As a case in point, he refers to the Ministry of Minority Affairs' Minority Concentration Districts (MCDs) programme. The largest of the Ministry's schemes, the MCD programme gets the lion's share of the Ministry's budgetary allocation. In the current budget, the Ministry's overall allocation went up from Rs. 1,740 crore to Rs. 2,600 crore. The MCD programme's share correspondingly went up from Rs. 889.50 crore to Rs. 1,204.20 crore.
Dr. Shariff maintains that this increase is eyewash. “This is deceiving people” he says, because so far hardly any of the MCD amount has been spent by the States. The Ministry's own figures establish “the dismal state of affairs.” Only five States reported spending any of the MCD money. The rest did not even bother to send a progress report.
The five States in turn picked up only tiny amounts, averaging an expenditure of just 8 per cent of the funding approved for them. The total cost of MCD projects approved by the Ministry as of December 31, 2009 was Rs.1,821.50 crore. Against this, the Ministry's account books show an expenditure of only Rs. 142.40 crore. The highest MCD spender was Uttar Pradesh which lifted 14.3 per cent of the total approved cost of Rs. 582.30 crore. Haryana followed with 12.8 per cent and West Bengal with 6 per cent.
Initiated in 2007, the MCD programme identified 90 districts in 20 States for targeted focus, based on parameters of backwardness and a minority population criterion of at least 25 per cent. Most MCDs are expectedly Muslim-dominated.
Mr. Shariff accepts that a lot of government schemes suffer from underutilisation of funds. However, when underutilisation touches 92 per cent, then “I would think that the lapse is intentional.” He gives the counter example of the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, where the fund utilisation averages around 70 per cent.
In an interview to The Hindu in September 2009, Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khursheed lamented that his Ministry was not able to touch the lives of ordinary Muslims. To be effective, the Ministry needed to have greater powers, he said.
Showing posts with label Budget 2009-10. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Budget 2009-10. Show all posts
Monday, April 5, 2010
Monday, July 6, 2009
Budget 2009-10 : Will Bharat Smile while India waits for non-budgetary incentives
Annual Budget is an exercise of stock taking therefore highly contextual; yet the balancing act it has to perform is not only in terms of revenue and expenditure, but need to address a number of dualisms that confronts Indian economy - for example, short and long term goals, rural and urban economy, agriculture and industrial (service) sectors, dualism of labor markets where 90% of labor force is in informal or unorganized sector, government versus private sector initiatives and not the least - Social Sector - so called people’s sector versus other formal sectors of the economy. Thus it is not a simple balancing line crossing, rather a number of such lines which are not parallel and the multiple crisscrossing in the web called National budget is not easy to confront with.
The contextual reality is that India is facing the heat of global economic downturn; and it would be futile to take solace in still positive growth of 6.3% in 2008-9 compared to near zero or a marginal global growth. What is important is not the level of GDP growth, but what incremental growth is achieved during the previous year; and a growth deceleration of about 3.0 % or so, does translates in to innumerable formal and informal shocks the corporate as well as general public is facing. One sure consequence is a broad based increase in unemployment but more specifically retrenchment of skill labor employed in selected export led industrial/services sectors where migrant and women labor has suffered.
The Budget 2009-10 presented this morning in many ways is a carried forward of the interim budget, but not much is added in terms of the ‘big bang’ second generation reforms nor strategy to plug a very high fiscal deficit of 6.8% which alone is 40 % of the total budgetary allocation and note that this amount is not on hand yet that spending will take effect immediately. Often upto one-third of allocations is never actually appropriated and spent thus the effecting need of fiscal deficit will be much smaller. Although the tax to GDP ratio is declared at 11.5%, the proceeds are far too inadequate to ease the interest payment worth 4% of GDP and the inevitable expenditure on defense worth another 2.5% of GDP.
This is budget with high fiscal deficit with no indication of from where this money will be brought in, limited direct tax incentives, no indication that domestic demand will be fired through fiscal and monitory incentives and there is no roadmap of disinvestment targets. However, while more details are awaited, what can be stated from the presentation of the finance minister is a focus on Bharat – meaning a focus on the common man beginning from a resolve to make agricultural sector rebound to a 4% growth; and there is also an emphasis on a number of infrastructural investments which can push both employment generation and augment rural markets. A 45% increase in allocation to projects under Bharat Nirman are noteworthy; further Rs. 325,000 cr or 5.45% of GDP worth funds are promised to be made available mostly from banking channels for agricultural credit at about 7% rate of interest. The farmers loan waver scheme is also extend further.
There is an emphasis on infrastructural development beginning from power development to development of rural roads and housing in both rural and urban areas especially through the Indira Ahwas yojana and JNNURM linked projects. The biggest gainer in this budget is the NREGA which has an allocation of Rs. 39,100 crores yet measures up to only 0.66% of GDP. This amount if fully spent will comfort millions of households especially by promoting employment of women. But since the NREGA wages are increased to Rs. 100/- nationally, a number of wage labor households may in fact net lower than expected annual income through wages since they may not migrate to urban or high wage rate areas due to availability of NREGA work. Thus the NREGA is a double edge apparatus, while on the one side it feels cool and nice on the other it can harm innovation and risk taking behavior.
Allocation to education programs including SSA and mid-day meals appear on the expected direction, but what is important is to ensure improving the quality of public education especially at the primary and elementary level which is not forthcoming in the budgetary allocations. The age old PDS is at its first year of getting redundant through a new program of providing 25 kg cereals at Rs.3 per kg for the BPL families. This program can only succeed if the BPL families are intelligently and correctly identified, and there is nothing which suggests that such a situation is achievable given over four decades of unsuccessful implementation of PDS. Whether ‘universal ID’ scheme can be put in place is yet to be seen and I am not yet hopeful on this innovation.
On the whole, agricultural and social sectors soaps are subject to implementation efficiencies and partnerships of the states; both are in the danger zone, therefore not much can be built upon these announcements yet. Besides, roads, markets and communications are drivers of the Indian economy but what has to be remembered is all this investment will be of no use if there are no users, for example what will you do by building mega infrastructural structures if there are no users and cost recovery. Having said that, the Indian growth story is going ‘ga-ga’ about the role of domestic demand; and given the global recession, it is indeed that capacity of the Indian citizen both in rural and urban areas to ‘fire the market’ so to speak that is the key for growth for the year 2009-10, but there is a week indication of this happening in the current budget.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crores of Rs. % GDP
Total Plan Exp 325,000 5.45
Fiscal Deficit 6.80
Revenue Deficit 4.80
Tax-GDP ratio 11.50
Interest payment 236,000 4.0
Defense expenditure 141,702 2.38
Selected social sector allocations 105,079 1.76
Total Budgetary allocation 1.020,838 17.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The contextual reality is that India is facing the heat of global economic downturn; and it would be futile to take solace in still positive growth of 6.3% in 2008-9 compared to near zero or a marginal global growth. What is important is not the level of GDP growth, but what incremental growth is achieved during the previous year; and a growth deceleration of about 3.0 % or so, does translates in to innumerable formal and informal shocks the corporate as well as general public is facing. One sure consequence is a broad based increase in unemployment but more specifically retrenchment of skill labor employed in selected export led industrial/services sectors where migrant and women labor has suffered.
The Budget 2009-10 presented this morning in many ways is a carried forward of the interim budget, but not much is added in terms of the ‘big bang’ second generation reforms nor strategy to plug a very high fiscal deficit of 6.8% which alone is 40 % of the total budgetary allocation and note that this amount is not on hand yet that spending will take effect immediately. Often upto one-third of allocations is never actually appropriated and spent thus the effecting need of fiscal deficit will be much smaller. Although the tax to GDP ratio is declared at 11.5%, the proceeds are far too inadequate to ease the interest payment worth 4% of GDP and the inevitable expenditure on defense worth another 2.5% of GDP.
This is budget with high fiscal deficit with no indication of from where this money will be brought in, limited direct tax incentives, no indication that domestic demand will be fired through fiscal and monitory incentives and there is no roadmap of disinvestment targets. However, while more details are awaited, what can be stated from the presentation of the finance minister is a focus on Bharat – meaning a focus on the common man beginning from a resolve to make agricultural sector rebound to a 4% growth; and there is also an emphasis on a number of infrastructural investments which can push both employment generation and augment rural markets. A 45% increase in allocation to projects under Bharat Nirman are noteworthy; further Rs. 325,000 cr or 5.45% of GDP worth funds are promised to be made available mostly from banking channels for agricultural credit at about 7% rate of interest. The farmers loan waver scheme is also extend further.
There is an emphasis on infrastructural development beginning from power development to development of rural roads and housing in both rural and urban areas especially through the Indira Ahwas yojana and JNNURM linked projects. The biggest gainer in this budget is the NREGA which has an allocation of Rs. 39,100 crores yet measures up to only 0.66% of GDP. This amount if fully spent will comfort millions of households especially by promoting employment of women. But since the NREGA wages are increased to Rs. 100/- nationally, a number of wage labor households may in fact net lower than expected annual income through wages since they may not migrate to urban or high wage rate areas due to availability of NREGA work. Thus the NREGA is a double edge apparatus, while on the one side it feels cool and nice on the other it can harm innovation and risk taking behavior.
Allocation to education programs including SSA and mid-day meals appear on the expected direction, but what is important is to ensure improving the quality of public education especially at the primary and elementary level which is not forthcoming in the budgetary allocations. The age old PDS is at its first year of getting redundant through a new program of providing 25 kg cereals at Rs.3 per kg for the BPL families. This program can only succeed if the BPL families are intelligently and correctly identified, and there is nothing which suggests that such a situation is achievable given over four decades of unsuccessful implementation of PDS. Whether ‘universal ID’ scheme can be put in place is yet to be seen and I am not yet hopeful on this innovation.
On the whole, agricultural and social sectors soaps are subject to implementation efficiencies and partnerships of the states; both are in the danger zone, therefore not much can be built upon these announcements yet. Besides, roads, markets and communications are drivers of the Indian economy but what has to be remembered is all this investment will be of no use if there are no users, for example what will you do by building mega infrastructural structures if there are no users and cost recovery. Having said that, the Indian growth story is going ‘ga-ga’ about the role of domestic demand; and given the global recession, it is indeed that capacity of the Indian citizen both in rural and urban areas to ‘fire the market’ so to speak that is the key for growth for the year 2009-10, but there is a week indication of this happening in the current budget.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crores of Rs. % GDP
Total Plan Exp 325,000 5.45
Fiscal Deficit 6.80
Revenue Deficit 4.80
Tax-GDP ratio 11.50
Interest payment 236,000 4.0
Defense expenditure 141,702 2.38
Selected social sector allocations 105,079 1.76
Total Budgetary allocation 1.020,838 17.1
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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