New index to rank states on delivery of schemes

A new performance index will rank states on how they fair in delivering key government schemes aimed at inclusive growth, the UPA's developmental plank for the last nine years.

Updated on: Dec 1, 2013, 01:26:00 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new performance index will rank states on how they fair in delivering key government schemes aimed at inclusive growth, the UPA's developmental plank for the last nine years.

The states will be evaluated on the quality of education, health and law and order among other services being provided by the government. The index will also look into how the state government delivers on providing water and electricity connection and issues land records.

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO), set up as an attached office of the Planning Commission, has decided to work out the first state-wise index of its type.

"The idea behind the index is to create competition among the states for better delivery of services and learning from each other's experience," IEO's director general Ajay Chibber told HT.

While the government evaluates performance of each scheme individually, there is no mechanism to holistically examine the outcome of over Rs 2,50,000 crore spent by Central government every year on social sector.

"Most of the schemes are not delivered effectively," Chibber added.

Evaluating the impact of converging different schemes such as the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) run by the women and child development ministry with new born related programmes run by the health ministry, is also lacking.

Chibber, who had worked in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) evaluating impact of social sector spending across the world, said the index would holistically look at the implementation of the schemes and at the capacity of the state governments to "deliver public service".

The new index would be backed by ground surveys to study the impact of these schemes. The first survey would be done on the efficacy of the public distribution system, which is now backed by the UPA's National Food Security law.

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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