UPA's two programmes named after India's biggest political icons --- Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru --- have failed to deliver desired outcomes, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has said.
UPA's two programmes named after India's biggest political icons --- Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru --- have failed to deliver desired outcomes, the Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) has said.
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The IEO, a body under the Planning Commission, is taking up a detailed study on the UPA's key schemes --- Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (MG-NREGA) aimed at creating infrastructure in rural and urban India respectively.
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"We have found that the two schemes named after India's biggest icons have not worked on the ideals for which they were initiated," Ajay Chhibber, director general of IEO said on Tuesday, adding that wages to NREGA workers have not been disbursed in Rajasthan since July last.
The UPA has attributed success of MG-NREGA as a reason for its return to power in 2009. The IEO in its preliminary evaluation has found that the scheme has not been to create rural infrastructure to boost local economy even though the government has spent over Rs 2,00,000 crore under this flagship scheme.
"MG-NREGA had mixed results due to poor implementation, corruption and leakages of the fund. There is also a question over the quality of assets constructed under MG-NREGA projects," Chhibber said, adding that the IEO has initiated an evaluation of the world's biggest social security scheme for those on the margins.
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JNNURM, the UPA's seventh biggest flagship programme to help upcoming cities to cope with growing urbanisation, has failed to deliver. "The programme has basic design flaw. There was no relation between the urban reform being sought and the projects being approved if the reforms were implemented," he added.
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JNNURM, the UPA's seventh biggest flagship programme to help upcoming cities to cope with growing urbanisation, has failed to deliver. "The programme has basic design flaw. There was no relation between the urban reform being sought and the projects being approved if the reforms were implemented," he added.
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As a result, just one percent of the housing projects and 18% of urban infrastructure projects were completed till 2012. Bihar was worst in initiating reforms and implementing projects and a probable reason was that the projects were not in line with Bihar's urban needs.
The IEO, which became operation just last month, will evaluate JNNURM to come up with recommendations for more sustainable approach to financing and management of basic infrastructure and better services especially for the poor and urban slum dwellers.
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Chhibber said the interim reports of the two programmes would be submitted to the government in June along with a report on the efficacy of the Public Distribution System (PDS).
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.
