Day before Delhi Budget, goverment presents outcome report
A day ahead of Delhi’s Budget for 2018-19, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday presented the government’s report card by highlighting the targets met by 14 of its 34 departments for a period of nine months from April to December, 2017.
Road infrastructure and public transport are the two sectors where people have benefitted the least from Delhi government, results of the city’s first outcome budget revealed.
A day ahead of Delhi’s Budget for 2018-19, deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia on Wednesday presented the government’s report card by highlighting the targets met by 14 of its 34 departments for a period of nine months from April to December, 2017.
The report indicated a good performance by the government in the education sector with the Directorate of Training and Technical Education (DTTE) scoring the highest with 89% of its critical indicators being “on track”, meaning they had made about 70% progress by December end.
Even in social welfare and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), the government rated itself high with 80% and 87% schemes being on track.
Arunava Dasgupta, an urban planner from the School of Planning and Architecture, lauded the budget report by saying that any kind of self-monitoring is good for the government as well as the citizens. He pointed out that the report clearly showed the priorities of the government which were health and education. “Among the 14 departments that were evaluated, the health sector had 1,685 indicators which is the highest. The next highest is just around 250. So this shows the amount of work going on in health,” he said.
However, experts who went through the status report of the outcome budget felt that when it comes to tangible projects like infrastructure, the government is lagging behind. “Wherever there is something measurable or tangible like the transport or PWD, the government has performed poorly. In social welfare, SC/ST/OBC/minority departments and DUSIB, the critical indicators are not framed properly. ,” said Debolina Kundu, associate professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs.
Citing an example from the outcome budget report, she pointed out that the DUSIB has built 3,064 dwelling units in 2016-17, but the 2011 census pegs the number of homeless in Delhi at 22,000. “From next time, the government should have uniformity and standardisation of indicators in the outcome budget,” Kundu said.
While presenting the budget, Sisodia urged for a mechanism to also monitor works done by the L-G office. “The L-G is also for the people. If there are files pending with him for months, that too should be accounted for. There should be a live monitoring system for both the government and the L-G together,” he said in the Assembly.
When it comes to roads, the PWD has failed in achieving majority of its targets including strengthening of national highways and the ring and Outer ring roads, the report stated. As much as 45% of its works were found to be off-track. Similarly, the transport and forest departments have 40% projects that are off-track.
Dasgupta pointed out that the government failed to provide any status of its works and schemes in the urban development department. “It is a key body of any government. But the report makes it look like a neglected one,” he said.