MPs slam 12th Plan ‘sans poverty line’

The UPA government’s 12th plan came under critical attack from Members of Parliament who described the plan document as “unrealistic,” devoid of “ground realities” and without a definite “poverty line”, Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jan 22, 2013, 01:58:07 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The UPA government’s 12th Plan came under attack from Members of the Parliament (MPs), who described the document as “unrealistic”, devoid of “ground realities” and without a definite “poverty line”.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Finance is evaluating the government’s 12th Plan even though the National Development Council — a body of chief ministers and key central Ministers — had approved it on December 27. It would mean that the committee’s suggestions may not be incorporated in the Plan document because it has gone through all the approval processes.

Committee chairperson and BJP leader Yashwant Sinha said the meeting remained inconclusive as all the members were unable to speak on the presentations made by plan panel members, led by deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

It was unusual for Ahluwalia and other panel members, including minister of state for planning Rajeev Shukla, to brief the committee on the 12th Plan as the bureaucrats, not political functionaries, usually submit submissions before the committee. However, Ahluwalia and six other members made presentations on various aspects of the plan on Monday.

Plan panel members found themselves being grilled by MPs on the mess created by the commission on India’s poverty line. They first adopted the Tendulkar Committee’s poverty line of 37.5% and, following criticism of it being low, junked it. The panel had appointed a committee headed by noted economist C Rangarajan to recommend another methodology to define poverty.

“Amazingly, the plan has been decided without any poverty line,” an MP said. Another pointed out that the UPA government had junked its own poverty line, and it was giving subsidies without making a clear demarcation in that regard. Ahluwalia told the members that the Rangarajan committee was expected to submit its report by October 2013, and asked members to submit their suggestions on how the poverty line should be defined.

The Planning Commission was criticised even by some of the Congress MPs. One of them said that the 12th Plan document fails to reflect the ground realities and has, therefore, failed to provide solutions. “There is too much emphasis on economic growth without addressing ways to check inflation. Vulnerable sections such as women and elderly people have been ignored,” the member said.

Many members also expressed their annoyance over the failure of the plan panel to incorporate their suggestions in the 12th Plan document.

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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