“At times the biggest reforms are not the ones that make headlines, but the ones concerned with details of governance which affect the everyday life of aam aadmi (common man). In preparing this year’s budget, I have been deeply conscious of this fact”, said Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in his budget speech yesterday.

(Child Labour in Assam – What can they expect from Indian Budget. Photo credit: www.northeastblog.in)

Let us see what he has done, especially with the northeast, to stand up to his own great speech.

*The allocation for special assistance has been almost doubled to Rs 8,000 crore for 2011-12. Out of this, Rs 5,400 crore has been allocated as untied Special Central Assistance.

*The ministry for development of north eastern region (DoNER) has been allocated Rs 1,550 crore for infrastructure development in the sectors like roads, bridges, power, irrigation, health, education, sports and drinking water supply, almost 12 percent lower than the Rs 1,760 allocated for 2010-11.

*Another Rs 170 crore has been earmarked for creating and upgrading infrastructure facilities especially in Arunachal Pradesh and other border areas in the northeast.

*The region will also get Rs 191 crore for central plan schemes. This includes Rs 60 crore as loans to the North East Development Finance Corporation (NEDFC), Rs 68 crore for the North East States Road Project (NESRP) and Rs.35 crore for the North Eastern Region Livelihood Project (NERLP).

While the figure above figures might look wonderful, it is not the amount of allocation that has been the problem over the years but the money that reaches where it should. Even yesterday in a conference on The Crisis of Northeast, renowned NE expert Sanjoy Hazarika said that even if half of the Rs. 8000 crore allocated reaches the people, there would be great changes. That has never happened. Is it going to happen by simply increasing the allocation Mr. Mukherjee?

Is this allocation enough?

Even on the front of allocation, there is no breakthrough announcement of a big ticket project that could change the face of the northeast. While more than Rs. 40,000 crores were spent on Commonwealth and related infrastructure projects in Delhi, the whole of northeast with a population of four times than that of Delhi receives Rs. 8000 crore. And that is done despite the pressing need of connectivity in the whole of northeast including Sikkim and despite China making remarkable strides in improving the connectivity on the other side of the border. What the railways ministry needs not to be mentioned.

While billions of dollars are spent on cricket in this country, the northeast where people are passionate about football has been made no special allocation for improving sports infrastructure. On the contrary, the ministry of youth affairs and sports has been allocated just Rs 1,121 crore in the annual budget for 2011-12, which is nearly one-third of last year’s 3,315.67 crore.

It makes us wonder how Mr. Mukherjee can be so naïve as to prepare a budget and a budget speech in sharp contradiction with each other.

Recently, Manipur, by being the top medal winner among states in the recently concluded Jharkhand National Games showed to the country what it can do with the meager resources it has. Why can’t Manipur be allocated special Sports Fund?

It is shocking that the government finds enough money for mobilizing armed forces to implement draconian acts like AFSPA but not to win the hearts and minds of people through sensible allocation in building the social capital.

Conclusion

India will continue to grow at some rate because it’s a developing country and there is so much to do; and also because the growth in this country is mostly enterprise driven. That, though, doesn’t address the concerns of inclusive development in a country of a billion plus population. India’s GDP growth of 9% doesn’t mean anything at all without the delivery mechanism functioning well. At a time when there are serious threats to the very idea of a welfare and a fair state amid concerns of systemic corruption and implementation failure, there is much more that the Manmohan Singh led UPA needs to do.

 

Comment