More for ministries that did well

To bring accountability to utilisation of plan expenditure, the Planning Commission has decided that allocation for funds in the financial year 2011-12 to Central government ministries will depend on evaluation of their performance by the Cabinet Secretariat.

Updated on: Jan 9, 2011, 23:26:53 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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To bring accountability to utilisation of plan expenditure, the Planning Commission has decided that allocation for funds in the financial year 2011-12 to Central government ministries will depend on evaluation of their performance by the Cabinet Secretariat.

The secretariat in April 2010 had come out with a result framework document (RFD), for each department to set targets they have to achieve. Since then performance evaluation of each Central government department has been done twice.

The evaluation now for the first time, will be a key for ministerial fund allocation, which is likely to increase by 15% as compared to Gross Budgetary Support of R3,74,000 crore for the financial year 2010-11. The plan panel had asked for a 20% increase, but the finance ministry agreed only for 15%.

Plan panel officials said most of the allocation will be towards implementation of Right To Education, which requires an additional R70,000 crore in the next three years and for rural infrastructure schemes such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.

The departments that have not done well on the RFD targets are unlikely to get higher budgetary allocation as compared to last fiscal. “If the departments fail to meet their own targets in RFD how can they be expected to perform better?” said a plan panel official. The departments that have used the funds more efficiently will get higher allocation.

Despite the approach, some sectors high on UPA government’s priority list such as agriculture, rural development and health are expected to get up 20% increase in allocation.

The government is expected to increase allocation for food subsidy from R54,000 crore to over R75,000 crore to work towards implementation of National Food Security law, which is being examined by a high-level committee constituted by the Prime Minister.

The government expects to implement the law in 2011-end.

As 2011-12 is the last financial year in the 11th plan, not many new schemes may be announced. New schemes to promote sports, Rashtriya Khel Abhiyan, and for job guarantee in urban areas is likely to be announced in the budget. In the khel abhiyan scheme, the government will provide funds at village and district-level to develop sports infrastructure.

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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