More funds for social sector likely

The Govt is expected to raise budgetary support by Rs 39K crore and also funds for critical sectors, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Feb 22, 2008, 23:15:13 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The government is expected to increase the gross budgetary support (GBS) for the next financial year to Rs 2,44,000 crore, an increase of about Rs 39,000 crore.

In addition to this, if required it is also willing to keep aside Rs 10,000 crore for “certain critical” sectors.

However, many central government ministries are still not happy. The total GBS required to meet the financial demand of the ministries is about Rs 2,88,292 crore, but the government has maintained that the demand could not be met because of fiscal restrictions imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act, 2003 (FRBM).

To keep the fiscal deficit within the 3 per cent limit, as prescribed by the FRBM Act, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has fixed the GBS at Rs 2,44,000 crore.

Although the Central ministries would gain in allocation by 15 per cent, the states would be richer by about 23 per cent more as compared to the last financial year, the planning commission has said. “States are getting higher on account of special allocation for Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh,” the commission said.

The increase of 15 per cent of allocation for Central ministries would mean that 62 per cent of their demand has been met. The major gainers would be 16 ministries, including the agriculture, and health and family welfare, where increase in allocation is over 18 per cent.
For the remaining ministries, the increase is less than 12 per cent. However, the department of atomic energy’s allocation is expected to fall by about Rs 500 crore.

The ministry of human resource development, which has sought Rs 53,305 crore for the next financial year for education, is likely to get only Rs 33,000 crore, which is an additional allocation of Rs 4,626 crore as against the last financial year.

Not happy with the proposed budgetary support, the HRD ministry has asked for an increase of at least be 19 per cent, which is equal to the allocation for the last year. HRD Minister Arjun Singh has already expressed his disappointment on the proposed allocation for minority education saying it was lower than the estimates for the 11 Five Year Plan.

Health Minister A Ramadoss also wants a bigger share. The finance ministry has proposed an increase of 19 per cent in his ministry’s allocation for the next financial year, whereas Ramadoss wants a 30 per cent increase to achieve the 2 per cent GDP target by the end of the 11th Plan.

The commission has, however, put the ball in the ministry’s court saying that achieving the 2 per cent GDP target would be tough since health expenditure as a percentage of GDP in states had been falling.

While the ministry of women and child development gets a huge 29 per cent increase in the proposed budgetary allocation, the ministry has said that the money is not enough to achieve the target of universalisation of integrated child development scheme (ICDS), a flagship programme to improve children nutrition.

The finance ministry plans to allocate Rs 16,000 crore for implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme in the next fiscal even though the rural development ministry estimates that Rs 18,500 crore would be required. The commission will provide additional funds once the full expenditure takes place.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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