No austerity in planning commission’s own plans

India’s top planning body Planning Commission’s rule of austerity in administering of the Central government schemes did not apply to its own scheme — celebrating 50 years of planning. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Jun 26, 2011, 23:46:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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India’s top planning body Planning Commission’s rule of austerity in administering of the Central government schemes did not apply to its own scheme — celebrating 50 years of planning.

The scheme ‘50th Year Initiatives for Planning’ envisaged for one year 2000-01 ran for a decade till the commission replaced it with a new one for plan formulation and review from 2011-12.

The scheme was originally launched in 2000-01 to prepare a statistical profile on selected themes, organising seminars to share success stories in area of governance, preparing state development reports and building a databank covering all important sectors.

The scope of the scheme was first changed in 2003 to include project preparation facility and then in 2005 to fund a high-level committee on infrastructure headed by Prime Minister.

Thereafter, the government’s regulator for all Central government schemes, worth Rs 3,25,000 crore, altered the scope of its own scheme to meet its regular expenses such as visits of advisors to Left Wing Extremism districts in 2010 and for review of flagship programmes.

The changes, the commission said in a Right To Information reply to Hindustan Times, were done with the approval of the competent authority.

The plan panel had also used the funds to hire consultants and professionals to carry out the panel’s day-to-day functioning. Consultants were hired to suggest remedial measures on the basis of mid-term appraisal of the 11th plan to form a basis for the 12th five year plan, the reply said.

The scheme was also used to hire legal consultants to vet 40 Model Concession Agreement even though the government has a specialized arm for the same — the Law ministry.

In 2010-11, Rs 84 lakh was spent for other administrative expenses which were not explained in the RTI reply. Another Rs 50 lakh was spent on offices and Rs 29 lakh on publications. Expenditure on similar heads was made since 2007-08. No break-up of data prior to 2007-08 was provided.

In all, the commission spent Rs 40 crore through the scheme in the decade but failed to say how much of it was spent on the original scope of the scheme. The panel also said that 20 state development reports were released and eight such reports are set to be released in 2010-11.

The plan did not debunk that scheme even though it has been asking all the Central government ministries to reduce the number of schemes for effective implementation.

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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