Centre may prune schemes, curtail social sector spending

The first full-fledged budget of the Narendra Modi government will see the number of centrally-sponsored schemes be halved from the present 66 to allow the focus to shift to new “transformational” schemes announced by the prime minister.

Updated on: Feb 18, 2015, 23:32:31 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The first full-fledged budget of the Narendra Modi government will see the number of centrally-sponsored schemes be halved from the present 66 to allow the focus to shift to new “transformational” schemes announced by the prime minister.

Narendra-Modi-wields-a-broom-with-NDMC-workers-to-launch-Swachh-Bharat-Abhiyan-in-Valmiki-Basti-in-New-Delhi-PTI-Photo

This is part of the government’s attempt to “rationalise” spending for the social sector which grew by more than seven times during the UPA regime and check the so-called misuse of public funds. “Only a handful of the earlier schemes will be implemented by the Centre. The rest will be directly implemented by the state governments,” said a senior government official, requesting anonymity, adding that priority would be on PM Modi’s 12 key projects like Make in India and Swacch Bharat Abhiyan.

The Prime Minister’s Office has constituted a committee of chief ministers to propose a mechanism for the transfer. The committee is expected to submit its report within a month. “We believe about 30-35 schemes can be transferred to state governments so they can own these schemes,” an official said, adding the BK Chaturvedi report on restructuring centrally-sponsored schemes had also emphasised on transferring these schemes — a recommendation the UPA did not implement.

The broad rule being considered for transfer of schemes like welfare of scheduled castes and tribes, sanitation and national horticulture mission to the states was the Centre should not have much role to play in state subject schemes. “The Centre can frame broad national development goals but states should have their own schemes to achieve these goals,” a government functionary said.

“Many of these schemes have suffered because the states have not provided their share of funds…States in their budget should provide for their share and give a commitment. Once that is done, the Centre will release the money,” the official said, adding that a mechanism for this was being tuned in consultation with the states.

Officials say the move will result in rationalisation of its social sector budget depending on the financial capacity of the states to implement them and will reduce Centre’s share and subsequent spending in the social sector.

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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