‘Less was spent on education, health in 11th 5-year plan’

India did not spent enough for the poor despite a commitment being made in the 11th five year plan. Health, education, women and children and agriculture got much less allocation than what the UPA government had promised. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Apr 23, 2011, 23:48:11 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India did not spent enough for the poor despite a commitment being made in the 11th five year plan. Health, education, women and children and agriculture got much less allocation than what the UPA government had promised.

In the information shared with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday, the commission admitted that infrastructure sectors ate into the funds meant for the social sector, except rural development.

Both, health and education got just 60% of the funds projected for these sectors in the 11th plan, which the PM had described as a total health and education plan. The plan ends in March 2012.

Health got Rs 75,533 crore as against the target of Rs 1,23,900 crore. Education got Rs 1,42,659 crore, while the target was 2,38,600 crore.

“Health and Educatgion received less than projected in the 11th plan. Allocations for these sectors will have to be increased in the 12th plan,” the panel said in a presentation made to Prime Minister on Thursday. The panel also wants to reduce the number of Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CCS) to improve allocation for social sectors.

Women and child development managed Rs 34,982 crore against the target of Rs 48,420 crore, primarily on account of increase in allowances of anganwadi workers.

The plan panel had assured a modest Rs 54,800 crore for agriculture, but was able to provide just Rs 43,583 crore. And most of that money came in the last two years of the plan, primarily to fight drought and its after effects.

The commission was, however, more than kind towards the infrastructure sector which received much more than assured in the 11th plan. The urban development sector got Rs 23,312 crore as against Rs 14,261 promised. Railway got about Rs 18,000 crore more than the target in the plan period.

Despite liberal allocation, the panel admitted that there still existed huge infrastructure gaps, an impediment for India to achieve the economic growth target of 9% to 9.5 %.

The social sector also suffered in allocations because of an 8 % to 12 % increase in the government’s salary and pension bill and non-plan expenditure rising by about 14 %.

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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