Targets won’t be met, govt may drop Bharat Nirman tag

Bharat Nirman, the UPA government's popular tag to showcase its rural infrastructure development, may end from the next financial year. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Sep 10, 2012, 23:53:12 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Bharat Nirman, the UPA government's popular tag to showcase its rural infrastructure development, may end from the next financial year.

Country's top advisory body's the Planning Commission wants the government not to use Bharat Nirman to showcase its development programme for six rural infrastructure sectors fearing its adverse implications in the next general elections with high inflation and slower than expected economic growth.

Bharat Nirman started by UPA 1 was aimed at providing drinking water connection to every rural home by 2012, affordable housing, increasing rural tele-density to 40 % by 2014, building all weather roads to all villages having population of more than 1,000 people by 2012, provide electricity connection to all villages by 2012 and bring one crore additional hectares of land under assured irrigation by 2012.

The plan panel, in its analysis for the 12th five year-plan (2012-17), has found that there was still a long distance to travel before the targets listed under Bharat Nirman could be met.

As per the latest estimate, around 40 % of households in India do not have electricity connection and the Indian women now have to travel more to fetch drinking water.

"Not all villages having population more than 1,000 have all weather roads as promised," said a senior plan panel functionary.

The panel has reported dismal performance in providing additional agriculture land irrigation facility with an increase of just a few thousand hectares in the 11th plan (2007-2012).

The only area, where the UPA government would be meeting its target is increasing the rural tele-density by 40 %. The target of providing a broadband connection to 2.5 lakh panchayats by end of 2012 would also be missed.

The panel believes that the targets could not be met because of poor focus on implementation despite adequate availability of funds. The idea of have Bharat Nirman was floated by Prime Minister's Office to improve monitoring of key rural infrastructure sectors.

With that not happening and next general elections around the concerns, the panel has suggested that the government should revert back to the old system of focusing on individual schemes, rather than a cluster.

It wants the government to improve implementation of 16 flagship schemes, four of which are part of Bharat Nirman, based on the UPA government's promises in the manifesto. "There would be additional flow of funds for the 16 flagship schemes in the 12th plan," the functionary said.

The decision on whether Bharat Nirman will continue or not would be taken at the full planning commission meeting headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh scheduled for Saturday.

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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