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The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), currently running schemes worth one lakh crore of rupees every year, is seeking more operational flexibility and is not even averse to scrapping several schemes by limiting itself solely to the provision of funds to the States to implement their priority schemes instead of prescribing norms and guidelines from the above.
Disclosing this to Business Line here in an interview, the Union Minister of Rural Development, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said that he has suggested to the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman, Mr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, that the 12th Plan (2012-17) should be a transition one. By the end of the terminal year of the 13th Plan, “we should have a giant fund, say, double of the one lakh crore. Out of this fund, let each State should get ‘x' thousand crore, so that let each one can do what it wants to execute such as to build roads or housing, provide employment or supply piped water to rural people.”
Mr Ramesh said he has already proposed this to Mr Ahluwalia and “if we can announce that at the end of the 12th Plan, we won't have any schemes, we will give money to the States: that would be a radical proposal”.
Flexi funds
As a precursor, he said the Ministry has suggested to the Plan panel the need for Flexi Funds. Thus, in a budget of one lakh crore of rupees for the Ministry, at least Rs 25,000 crore can be Flexi Funds in order to promote innovation and to have a go at different schemes. He said today, many southern States such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala are not beneficiaries of our programme as they have already reached a level of certain rural infrastructure and development. But being a ‘prisoner of norms and guidelines, I could not do anything when the Chief Minsters from the southern region seek outlays for rural schemes of their priorities”, he added.
Asked about the controversy on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme implementation, Mr Ramesh said that a discussion paper on MGNREGA is in the public domain for eliciting comments over the next two weeks and the needed reform measures would be in place soon.
He said the Ministry is mulling over how to integrate rural housing, water and sanitation programmes for cost-effective delivery to the people. He deplored the co-existence of individual hygiene with collective filth in our midst and said a campaign for open-defecation-free village concept would be rolled out soon.
Water schemes
Mr Ramesh said that he has proposed a meeting of the State Secretaries on Water here on September 26 to discuss new initiatives in water quality and piped water supply schemes “Just providing more funds for water-pumps is not going to address the water quality” he said adding that there must be cost recovery in water supply and people should pay for it. Of late, urban water supply is paradoxically more subsidised than rural water supply scheme, but “I am a minister for rural water supply scheme only”, he quipped. But, he said in community management of water supply funds, the rural community must raise resources for the maintenance of the system.
polemical poverty estimates
To a query about the polemical poverty estimates, Mr Ramesh said the Plan panel approved estimate is based on National Sample Survey that measures expenditure on items of consumption.
“What we are doing in MoRD is socio-economic caste census 2011 where we survey the rural households automatically including/excluding them as the case may be later on. We collect data on different facets of rural deprivation. There is no necessary link between the poverty estimates of the type the Plan panel depends on and the type of deprivation survey that we are doing”, Mr Ramesh said.
Mr Ramesh does not think it proper to artificially impose “a Tendulkar Committee (TC) cap or a TC plus on the households that are rank-ordered according to deprivation criteria based on our survey which we hope to finish by December this year or January next”.
He also denied the MoRD survey “as the below-poverty-line (BPL) census, while we are canvassing information on the socio-economic characteristics of rural households”.
He said the Cabinet has approved what should be the automatic exclusion/inclusion which applies only to the post-survey results and not to the survey.
Based on the analysis post-survey applying Cabinet approved norms and seven deprivation indices, rank-ordering of households would be done to determine who should be in the BPL”.
He clarified that only 8-10 per cent of our total funds flow is based on BPL criteria and the balance is based on different criteria”. BPL norm is mainly relevant for food security bill, he added.
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