Nothing big coming except stimulus withdrawal

Don’t expect big-ticket schemes in the budget 2011 but the surprise can be measures to initiate withdrawal of stimulus package worth Rs 20,000 crore announced during 2008-09.Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 16, 2011, 24:37:39 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Don’t expect big-ticket schemes in the budget 2011 but the surprise can be measures to initiate withdrawal of stimulus package worth Rs 20,000 crore announced during 2008-09.

The Planning Commission has told all the Central government ministries that no new schemes will be considered for the budget except those, which got in principle approval in first half of 2010.

“We are in the last year of the 11th five year plan and we want to consolidate on the schemes launched during the period,” said a senior plan panel official. “No use in launching new schemes now. They can be considered for the 12th plan (starting in 2012-13)”

As a result, the panel has rejected proposals for at least 15 new schemes submitted by different ministries. Some of these schemes were part of the 11th plan but the ministries failed to deliver the framework to launch them.

One such programme was job guarantee for poor in urban areas on the lines of Mahatama Gandhi National Rural Employement Guarantee Scheme. But, there was no consensus on the model to implement the scheme.

“The job card model applicable in rural areas will not work due to fast changing demographic nature of urban poor areas,” the official said. In addition, questions are also being raised whether such a scheme is needed in urban areas, as even in rural India the average employment being given is not more than 50 days.

A possible impact of rejection of new schemes would be that many ministries would not witness a substantial increase in their allocation from additional 15 % expected in the Gross Budgetary Support for next budget.

Plan panel officials said performance of many of the social sectors ministries such as Women and Child Development (implementing agency for Rs 10,000 crore Integrated Child Development Scheme), Rural Development (in-charge of Rs 39,100 crore MGNREGA) and Social Justice and Empowerment (runs schemes for welfare of dalits) has not been very good on utilization of funds.

A ministry, that has performed well on fiscal expenditure was Human Resources Development, in-charge of Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Midday meal scheme, two flagship programmes of the UPA government. Enrolment in schools till primary level is already over 97 %.

With the economy doing well, there is a view in the plan panel that the UPA government should announce partial withdrawal of the Rs 20,000 crore stimulus package given in 2009. The package included tax cuts and incentives for exports, housing, textile and infrastructure to stimulate economy.

“Recent data has shown that the economy is out of recession,” said a senior economist in the panel, who was not willing to be quoted, as officials are not allowed to speak on budget issues. Finance minister Pranab Mukerjee will take the final decision.

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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