What the CAG’s Performance Audit has revealed about the ‘flagships’ – the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water Mission – is the pattern. NC Saxena draws attention to an account of another ‘flagship’ programme held up by Chidambram in this new Budget, the ICDS – the Integrated Child Development Services. After citing what the PM, FM, etc. have been saying about ensuring outcomes and not being lulled by outlays, Saxena asks, and ‘How is outcome delivered in the states?’, and answers, ‘By falsifying records!’ He cites the tour observations of a person in a position to know, and unlikely to state things that would embarrass the Government:

‘We discovered that all data of children at the centre for the past five months, weight, vaccinations, health records etc, were filled in with pencils. On probing further, I found it was done so that in case of an official inspection, the figures could be erased and “correct” data inserted to make the centre’s performance look good!’

The writer? The Congress MP, Sachin Pilot. Recalling such accounts, Saxena observes, ‘The practice is so widely prevalent in all the states, presumably with the connivance of senior officers, that the data reaching GOI [according to a recent study by the National Institute of Public Cooperation and Child Development] shows only 8% as the overall percentage of malnourished children in case of 0-3 years (with only one percent children severely malnourished), as against 46% reported by NFHS-3. What is equally astonishing is the fact that records show a steep decline in the percentage of malnourished children from 29% to 8%, which is totally at variance with the findings of the various NFHS surveys. By sending bogus reports the field officials are thus able to escape from any sense of accountability for reducing malnutrition.’

This then is the pattern. And what does Chidambram propose to do about the matter? He sets it out in his new Budget:

‘I think we do not pay enough attention to outcomes as we do to outlays; or to physical targets as we do to financial targets; or to quality as we do to quantity. Government therefore proposes to put in place a Central Plan Schemes Monitoring System (CPSMS) that will be implemented as a Plan scheme of the Planning Commission. A comprehensive Decision Support System and Management Information System will also be established. The intended outcome is to generate and monitor scheme-wise and State-wise releases for about 1,000 Central Plan and centrally sponsored schemes in 2008-09.’

Pray, what is the reason to believe that this new central scheme of the Planning Commission will work better than the 1000 central schemes of the Planning Commission that it is to monitor? Then follow the currently fashionable words, ‘Government also intends to strengthen evaluation. Some ministries have started concurrent evaluation. This needs to be supplemented by independent evaluations conducted by research institutions. The Planning Commission will authorise such evaluations of the major schemes and complete the task by the time of the mid-term review of the Eleventh Plan.’

Pray, why will the new evaluations authorised by the Planning Commission be more independent than the innumerable ones that it has authorised in the past? Why will they be more independent than the countless evaluations that have been done independently of the Commission in the past?

The piece de resistance

In each of its five Budgets, this Government has had one triumphant item – agricultural credit. In each Budget, Chidambram has proclaimed higher and higher targets, and in each he has announced that the target has been exceeded. In the new Budget, he says that, as against Rs. 100,000 crore that were disbursed when this Government assumed office, Rs. 280,000 crore shall be disbursed as rural credit in 2008/09.

Surely, that very fact should have alerted the Government that either the credit is not reaching those who need it most, or that their problems are not going to get solved by credit alone. As suicides have mounted, as the agrarian crisis has barged more and more into its face, the Government has done what it always does – it has appointed committee after committee: the Swaminathan Commission; the Radhakrishna ‘Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness’; the A. Vaidyanathan ‘Task Force on Cooperative Banking’; the RBI’s ‘Working Group on Distressed Farmers’ headed by Sardara Singh Johl; the RBI’s ‘Technical Group to Review Legislations on Money Lending’ headed by SC Gupta.

Second, it has rained package after package:

•2% remission in interest rate – 1,700 crore were provided for this in the 2006/07 Budget;

•The Backward Regions Grant Fund: in the 2006/07 Budget, Chidambram announced that he would disburse Rs. 5,000 crore; this year he pledges to disburse Rs. 5,800 crore;

•In July, 2006, Government announced the PM’s special package for distressed farmers of 31 districts in four states. In the 2007/08 Budget, Chidambram announced that Rs. 16,979 crore would be spent under this special package. The usual panoply of institutions have been set up to implement and monitor the package: state-level committees consisting of representatives of central and state government, district level committees and Panchayati Raj institutions, and ‘appropriate institutional structure and special purpose cooperatives/community based organizations at the local level for delivery of the package and optimum utilization of resources in a time-bound manner.’

And yet distress continues unabated. Yet suicides go on increasing. Who is swallowing up these packages? What is happening to the packages?

The Report of the Radhakrishna Committee – The Expert Group on Agricultural Indebtedness – gives a part of the answer. It sets out the result of its inquiries into the fate of the PM’s special package in its Report:

•Commenting on the disbursement of fresh loans, the Committee observes, ‘The gap in the off take of fresh credit in three states (Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra) indicates that the credit needs of the farmers were not assessed accurately. The credit flow targets do not appear to have been based on a proper assessment of the credit absorption capacity at the farm/household level. In order to ensure that the basic objectives of providing farm credit are not distorted, disbursements should have been made only after proper project appraisal. This also calls for greater coordination among banks and block level officials at the ground level in identifying the genuine credit needs of the people.’