12th plan size falls due to economic slowdown

Country’s top advisory body the Planning Commission has trimmed the funding for India's socio-economic development for the 12th plan (2012-17) with no signs of abatement of economic slowdown. Budget break-up: who gets what

Updated on: Sep 13, 2012, 02:03:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Country’s top advisory body the Planning Commission has trimmed the funding for India's socio-economic development for the 12th plan (2012-17) with no signs of abatement of economic slowdown.

The panel has projected Rs. 27,10,840 crore funding for the 12th plan allocation as against the earlier estimate of Rs 35,00,000 crore.

The final allocation will be decided on Saturday at a meeting headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

"It is because we have scaled down growth target to 8.25-9% for the plan from 9.5-10%," a senior plan panel functionary said.

“In the present scenario achieving even 8% will not be easy.”

Still, it is more than double of the budgetary support during the 11th plan (2007-12) of Rs 11,67,885 crore.

With the slowdown impacting the manufacturing sector and exports in a big way, the panel believes that its revenue generation would be much less than earlier projected.

In addition, the inability of the government to reduce its subsidy burden because of UPA alliance related compulsions is another reason for the plan not being able to spare huge funds for the social sector.

Despite the constraints, health and education would get major chunk of Central funds in the 12th plan.

“As the PM (Manmohan Singh) has announced the focus of the plan would be health and education,” the functionary said.

The panel has almost tripled the allocation for health sector from Rs. 90,765 crore in the 11th plan to Rs. 3,00,018 crore for the next plan.

The additional allocation would be utilised to have a National Health Mission, in place of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and a system for free medicines through public sector health institutions.

The casualty of the fund constraint would be the launch of Universal Health Scheme, providing minimum health facilities to all residents free of cost.

Education is expected to get Rs. 4,73,728 crore, almost two and a half times more than the allocation in the 11th plan. Majority of the funds would go for strengthening school education and improving quality.

The panel has also allocated funds for bringing pre-school under the ambit of Right To Education (RTE).

The RTE covers children in 6-14 age group. Around Rs. 10,000 crore has been allocated to start 2,500 model schools under Public Private Partnership model.

Jairam Ramesh’s rural development sector is set to witness a huge increase in allocation for water supply and sanitation and management of land resources.

In addition, agriculture and food processing sectors are set to get over 100% increase in allocations as compared to 11th plan, the projections for the 12th plan say.

One area where the UPA government will increase its focus is financial inclusion. The funding for the same would be tripled with every Indian resident expected to get a Unique Identification (Aadhaar) number by end of 2013.

There will also be special incentive for the banking sector to ensure that every household has an Aadhaar linked bank account by end of the plan.

The losers in the bargain are sports and youth affairs ministry and department of expenditure whose allocations would be less than in the previous plan.

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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