In a move to reduce disparities among states, improve their performance, and initiate better fiscal management of resources, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ushered a key social sector reform.
In a move to reduce disparities among states, improve their performance, and initiate better fiscal management of resources, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has ushered a key social sector reform.
The Prime Minister’s Office has asked the Planning Commission to introduce a mechanism to give financial incentives to the lagging states to improve their performance in delivery of schemes and identify areas where a focused approach is required.
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This, the PMO believes, could result in infusing greater competition among the states on improving their performance on the social sector schemes. It has outlined four focus areas to improve performance and has asked the officers in the panel to devise a strategy.
The panel has suggested that financial rewards in the form of united funds can be given to the best performing states. Machinery for monitoring of such funds will have to be put in place, the panel said, adding that the state government should be accountable to demonstrate that the results can be achieved through use of additional funds.
Another incentive suggested was recoginition of states for good performance. The Centre may establish a system of annual awards in different areas of public service delivery in recoginition of exemplary performance at the state government level as it would create competition among states, a panel official said.
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The panel also said that the Centre should introduce performance ranking of the states in consultation with them on social factors. Once that is done, the flow of Central funds can be linked with performance.
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The panel also said that the Centre should introduce performance ranking of the states in consultation with them on social factors. Once that is done, the flow of Central funds can be linked with performance.
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It also wants more funds to be given for improving the capacity of the local bodies to implement government schemes and introduce the concept of community monitoring.
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.
