Money boost unlikely for social sector in 12th plan

Health, education and rural development are not expected to get the hike they had sought.

Updated on: May 29, 2012, 01:09:44 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The global economic slowdown may pinch the poor in India. The Planning Commission is redrawing its projections for the 12th five year plan (2012-17) in wake of current global economic situation and could end up scaling down money for welfare schemes.

Health, education and rural development are not expected to get the hike they had sought and allocations for some other ministries are also likely to fall. The panel had initially targeted annual economic growth of 9% in the 12 plan, but achieving even 8% appears difficult.

According to documents accessed by HT, the plan panel had initially decided to seek an increase of about 50% in allocations for the plan considering that various ministries had sought over Rs 6,00,000 crore as additional resources. But, with the implications of the economic meltdown worldwide visible now in India, the plan is likely to seek about 33% increase in allocations as compared to 11th plan (2007-12).

This means that the UPA may offer less than Rs 1,1662 or US $ 30 per capita per annum for health, which is lower than what neighbours Bhutan and Sri Lanka spend. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had described the 12th five year plan as health and education plan, assuring higher allocation at the National Development Council meeting in 2011.

But since April 2012, the economy has witnessed a downward swing and the plan panel’s own projection of allocating Rs 1,662 per capita per annum as compared with present Rs 1,108 ($20) for health does not seem feasible.

"Considering poor revenue generation achieving the proposed roll out for the health sector may be difficult," says minutes of a recent plan panel meet held to discuss resource allocation for 12th plan.

Plan panel officials also said the economic slow-down can increase the time-period for implementing UPA government's universal health scheme aimed at providing basic health facilities to all citizens.

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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