Indias development report card shows fuzzy priorities….Subodh Varma
On Monday, leaders from 191 countries will get together in New York to review the progress in achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) a set of eight targets to fight hunger, disease and ignorance to be met by 2015. India has already prepared an interim report that shows mixed progress. But can we inch closer to achieving any of these targets in the remaining five years?
Unlikely, if one studies the government spending on programmes related to each of these goals. According to an analysis by the Centre for Budget & Governance Accountability (CBGA), the government’s budget allocations over the past three years indicate foggy priorities and missed opportunities. India is severely lagging in poverty eradication, providing food for all, reduction in child and mother deaths and fighting infectious diseases.
Budgetary allocations for these remain highly inadequate as per the CBGA analysis.
Budgetary allocations for these remain highly inadequate as per the CBGA analysis.
A glaring example of low spending and misplaced priorities is visible in the effort to meet the sixth MDG stamping out malaria, TB and other infectious diseases and combating AIDS. Spending related to target has stagnated at just 0.2% of the government’s total expenditure between 2008-09 and 2010-11. Data collated by CBGA shows that in the current year, more than half of the total funds Rs 1291 crore out of a total Rs 2341 crore are being spent only on fighting AIDS. All other vector-borne diseases such as malaria, TB, cholera, dengue etc, get a mere Rs 361 crore this year, down from Rs 367 crore
last year.
last year.
For poverty eradication and fighting hunger, the goal was to cut the existing rates in 1990 to half in 2015. But government expenditure on two major schemes that address this target providing cheap foodgrain through PDS and the MGREGA have seen a proportional decline in 2010-11 over the preceding year. These schemes accounted for 10.7% of the total government spending in 2009-10 but dipped to 10.2% in 2010-11.
The fight against infant and child mortality too is hamstrung because of insufficient funds. Government spending in schemes such as immunization and reproductive and child healthcare is stagnating at a miserly 0.2% of its total spending. To reduce maternal mortality rates through schemes such as Janani Suraksha Yojana, government spending was just 0.7% of the total in 2008-09, which increased to 0.9% this year.
MDG targets that India seems to be doing relatively better in are universalization of primary education, gender equality and environment. Unsurprisingly, these are the very areas in which government spending has slightly improved, though marginally. In the past three years, expenditure on schemes for promoting women’s empowerment has increased from 3.2% to 3.7% of total spending, while spending on primary education has increased from 0.8% to 0.9% and on environment/sanitation, from 1.1% to 1.3%. Since 2004, during the UPA rule, total spending on social services has increased from about 8% to 13% in 2008-09. This appears impressive but as a proportion of GDP, the increase is from 1.2% to 2.1% only. In other words, the benefits of a high growth trajectory are not being fully routed to needy people. So, in New York, the Indian delegation representing the world’s largest pool of poor, illiterate and diseased people may well have to do some nifty explaining.
