Nitish and Chidambaram bond, Bihar may gain

The new found cosines between Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and the UPA government would translate into the state getting around 21% increase in the Central funding for 2013-14, one of the highest for any state in the current financial year.

Updated on: May 15, 2013, 01:30:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The new found cosines between Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar and the UPA government would translate into the state getting around 21% increase in the Central funding for 2013-14, one of the highest for any state in the current financial year.

Kumar had shown extraordinary courtesy towards finance minister P Chidambaram when he visited Patna last week. Kumar took Chidambaram in his own car to the Bihar Congress headquarters at Sadaquat Ashram in western Patna, waited outside as the finance minister confabulated with party workers and then saw him off at the Patna airport. It was enough to create political buzz in Patna.

When Kumar would be in Delhi on Wednesday to discuss the state plan with planning commission deputy chairperson Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the Centre would also reciprocate. The panel would offer Bihar Rs 34,000 crore for 2013-14, a hike of around Rs 6,000 crore as compared to the annual plan for 2012-13.

It would be generous grant because the UPA government on average increased funding to the states this year between 15-18 %. Even the Congress ruled states such as Haryana and Assam did not get the increase in absolute terms as compared to what is being offered to Bihar.

The keenness to keep Kumar in good humor before next general elections in 2014 was evident on Tuesday when a plan panel committee met to clear new projects and review old proposals from Bihar under the backward regions grant fund (BRGF).

The Cabinet has already decided to allocate Rs 12,000 crore to Bihar as part of a special plan under BRGF for the 12th plan (2012-17). The committee considered proposals for allocation of Rs 2,000 crore to the state in the current fiscal under BRGF. “I think that Kumar would be happy with us,” said a senior planning commission functionary, expecting lot some debate over Kumar’s unmet demand of special category status for Bihar.

Although the government is offering huge monetary increase, Bihar’s record is utilizing funds has not been excellent. Of the Rs 1,500 crore allocated under BRGF special plan for 2012-13, the state was able to utilise only Rs 800 crore.

In another programme to check backwardness in naxal affected areas, Bihar utilization of funds was just 60 % of Rs 635 crore on offer. There were some districts like Kaimr and Munger which did not seek even a single penny during 2012-13 against the allocation of Rs 30 crore for a district under Integrated Action Plan (IAP) to carry out developmental works in left wing extremist districts, the panel said in its review of the scheme.

Bihar record on implementing some big ticket projects has also been dismal even though it promises to grow economically at an average of 9.1% in the 12th plan as compared to national target of 8.2 %. The state wants to increase its spending on agriculture and social sectors.

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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