The UPA government’s social welfare schemes are beginning to show results, but there are still some kinks. The solution lies in strengthening grassroots institutions
When Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presents the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s first full budget in its second term, he may in some ways be presiding over a tipping point. The Indian brand of high public spending on social welfare has gradually started showing results, although they are still patchy. India has committed huge capital to development. It must now strengthen the framework in which it operates its human development programmes.
Nevertheless, there are issues. Ashok Vardhan Shetty, principal secretary to the Tamil Nadu government, wrote to the central ministry of rural development in December 2009 that NREGS had helped his state desilt and de-weed canals, ponds and irrigation tanks, boosting agriculture productivity. It had also helped raise the minimum wage levels for 86 lakh landless labourers of the state, which has been one of the better implementers of the central scheme. Yet even it has managed to spend only a little more than half of the funds available to it. The overall spending under NREGS is close to Rs. 28,000 crore so far this year, providing nearly 2.16 crore person days of work. Currently, there are about 23 lakh ongoing works under the scheme. But the system is weighed down by paperwork and workers have begun to shy away from the scheme as payments are getting delayed by months.
Primary Education
The late realisation that NREGS was one of the major factors that returned it to power seems to have prompted the Congress Party to get some mileage out of it. The government amended Schedule 1 of the Act that lists the works that can be undertaken to include construction of the Bharat Nirman Rajiv Gandhi Sewa Kendra.
(This story appears in the 05 March, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)