Welfare on a slowdown

With one eye on election and other on fiscal management finance minister P Chidambaram struck a delicate balance between "pragmatism" and "populism" in his meager increase in allocations for the social sector for financial year 2013-14 without compromising on priority areas for the UPA government -- inclusive growth. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: Mar 1, 2013, 02:09:58 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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With one eye on election and other on fiscal management finance minister P Chidambaram struck a delicate balance between "pragmatism" and "populism" in his meager increase in allocations for the social sector for financial year 2013-14 without compromising on priority areas for the UPA government -- inclusive growth.

The inclusive growth agenda had earned UPA rich dividend in 2009 general elections and Chidambaram's set the tone for 2014 polls by outlining "three faces" -- women, youth and poor -- for special attention, who constitute more than 70% of the country's population.

Chidambaram's 6.5% increase, or Rs 5,55,322 crore (Rs 5,553 billion) in allocations for welfare and 16 flagships schemes in next fiscal appears small as compared to money given for same in the last budget Rs 5,21,025 crore (Rs 5210 billion) and has not enthused many socio-economists.

But, it, shows his fiscal prudence as government's own estimate shows that the Central ministries ability spend in current fiscal would not be more than Rs 4,29,187 crore or Rs 4291 billion (revised budget estimate).

Keeping elections in view, the finance minister has given hikes to all social sector ministries, kept allocation at same level for industrial ministries and reduced funds marginally for economic departments.

Yamini Aiyar, director of Delhi based budgeting service Accountability Initiative, was not surprised with low increase considering the overall "fiscal environment" and felt that it will not make much difference at the ground level as "spending capacity" of the government was weak.

"The FM's speech had nothing to offer in terms of a policy or vision statement for addressing these problems," she told HT.

The UPA government had effectively introduced its mantra of 'growth for social development' when Chidambaram was the finance minister in UPA-1.

It remained high on the government radar for the next eight years with average annual hike in gross budgetary support (GBS) -- government's support to the Central plan -- being about 15.4 %.

The low GBS in percentage terms for UPA in 10th year in power still meant allocating more than 60 % of total money given for social sector in five years of UPA-1.

The finance minister has increased allocation for sustained priority areas -- health, education and rural India - adding special focus on youth.

"My budget for 2013-14 has one overarching goal; to create opportunities for our youth to acquire education and skills that will get decent jobs or self employment," he said, as he announced an incentive scheme of Rs 10,000 for youth who clear skill certification test.

NC Saxena, member of Sonia Gandhi headed National Advisory Council and former planning commission secretary was not impressed with Chidambaram's money for welfare.

"There is nothing for old people and poor people except some tweaking in existing programmes," he said.

Both Aiyar and Saxena, however, said that Chidambaram lost an opportunity to correct some inherent flaws the way government implements its schemes even though the finance minister announced that number of Central schemes would be reduced to 70 schemes from existing 173 for better monitoring and pan-India coverage of direct benefit transfer (DBT) to plug leakages.

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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