Promises, Performance Claims and Ground Reality
Posted : December 20, 2008 at 2:02 pm [IST]
Chidamaram is a good speaker. He puts his arguments in simple language with lot of data and conviction. Yesterday I was listening him reply to a debate on present slowdown condition of Indian economy in parliament. He kept on giving data after data of better financial performance during the last four and a half years of UPA government- GDP, tax revenues, fiscal and revenue deficits, and money transferred to states. He was replying to a special discussion on the review of the economic situation, and kept on claiming the UPA Government record as far better than the NDA. Perhaps as politician, he was right to keep the opposition bombarded with figures. Unfortunately, the opposition has hardly anyone to match his capability in Lok Shabha at least. It is not wrong to spend on social programmes” like loan waiver for farmers, mid-day meals schemes, rural development, national rural guarantee employment programme to help uplift the rural and urban poor. However, he must also come out with the government plan to effectively reduce the ‘40% leakage in PDS scheme and ways to cut down the peril of forged muster rolls hurting NREG that he confessed. Can a resource starved nation continue with the leakages and forgery and reduce its poverty level of 30% or more?
If the country is to go by his views on the floor, the dream of shining India appears to be very near. India under even the difficult situation this year will attain a 7% GDP growth that will make India the second fastest growing among the big economies, naturally behind China. I wonder why he keeps on comparing with the performances of NDA in its six years. How can he say that if NDA would have got back in power, it would have failed to perform so well? Perhaps the politician in him forces him to do that. I believe the country has reached a maturity level where the country can sustain growth rate unless someone real duffer or saboteur becomes the finance minister and equally worse prime minister.
Interestingly, the present government has performed very well so far the promises and schemes are concerned. NREG could have brought down the poverty level of the country to a respectable figure. Right of information could have improved the image of the country that is one of a corrupt nation. Allocation of fund announced inside and outside the parliament for infrastructure could have provided roads and power plants. Unfortunately, nothing significant has happened on this regards. In a recent judgment the Delhi High Court proclaimed that the ministry of surface transport and highways was indulging in “day to day interference” into the affairs of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), a statutory body granted functional autonomy by Parliament. And that is the reason why crucial highway projects across the country have been moving at a snail’s pace in the past few years. And the discovery must have left the countrymen both shocked and angry. NHAI has neither completed GQ nor NSEW corridor express ways till date. It is a shame for the government. How can Mr. Chidamaram overlook these failures? And without execution of such projects of national importance, how can the people at large get benefited? Will he not agree that the good roads itself enhance the GDP growth by few percent?
Unfortunately, I have been following NHAI progress closely since NDA time and had corresponded with NHAI, transport minister, and even the PMO on its performance. I feel pained to see how minister and babus can keep the country behind because of the lack of accountability. Why should the minister and the officers concerned not be sacked for non-performance? Why not the people and media force the minister and the secretary to resign as they did for the home minister?
Similar is the reason behind the capacity building at BHEL that has become the bottleneck in executing power plant projects. BHEL must expand four or six times through outsourcing and additional investment in plant and facilities for critical parts and components. Why can’t it happen?
A similar picture emerges if one gets into depth of the two promises of Mr. Chidambaram regarding the renovations of all water bodies of the country and the upgradation of ITIs that he kept on making since the first budget of this government. It is unfortunate that the prime minister talks about the setting up of a large number of institutes of higher learning what Nehru did. “Apart from the new IITs, the government was in the process of setting 30 Central Institutes of Excellence, 10 National Institutes of Technology (NIT), 20 Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIIT), 2 Indian Institutes of Science (IISc), 2 Schools of Architecture and Planning and 1000 new polytechnics across the country in the next five years.”
But the country badly needs more of polytechnics and ITIs and trade schools, perhaps one in five to ten panchayat. Why should not the government get into fast track for skill building and to reduce the number of the school dropouts that are about 80-90%?
I think any new government must be judged by the projects completed and not by the schemes announced, and fund allocated.
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PS TN Ninan puts similar questions today in Business standard. “So what are we going to stop, by saying “Enough is enough”? Will we stop the surface transport minister from changing the chairman of the National Highway Authority of India every six months, so that some road contracts can be given out and our highways get built? Will we improve our military procurement processes so that the air force can get some new planes, and troops get the best night-vision equipment (neither having happened so far)? Will we catch the poachers so that the Kanha tiger reserve does not go the way of Sariska, and become devoid of tigers?”
- Indra
Category: Government Policy/Administration |
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