Answer these Question ns based on the passages.

Passage II
P. Chidambaram might have rubbed Corporate India the wrong way by putting the big-bang reforms on the backburner, but he has definitely tried to buy peace with the aam aadmi by increasing investment in big-ticket projects like bharat Nirman and National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREG). While the outlay for bharat Nirman has been hiked by 31.6%, allocations for the education sector and health and family welfare schemes have gone up by 34:2% and by 21.9%, respectively. Chidambaram also surprised many by increasing the education cess to 3%, from 2%, to fund secondary and higher education. The government also proposed to increase funding for the midday meal scheme from the primary level to the upper primary classes in 3,427 educationally backward blocks. However, it has pruned allocation for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) - a scheme started by the NDA government. To arrest the dropout ratio after eighth standard, a means-cum-merit scholarship scheme covering one lakh students has been announced. The first year of the Eleventh Plan period will also see the appointment of two lakh teachers and construction of five lakh classrooms.

As the saying goes, well begun is half done. but how many of these noble intentions will translate into actions? There are many unanswered Question ns. One, are the increased outlays enough to achieve the social goals enumerated in the UPA government’s common minimum programme (CMP)? Two, is the greater allocation to the flagship programmes in proportion to the GDP growth? And more importantly, will the increased allocation also fix the lacuna in the delivery mechanism? The CMP, for instance, has set a 6% target for education spend (as a proportion of the GDP). However, the spend has hardly touched the halfway mark as the coalition government moves closer to the end of its tenure. The education cess has also been swelling the general pool without any firm commitment from the government on incremental spending to meet specific objectives. Experts also Question n the success of the bharat Nirman project touted as “the cornerstone of the UPA government’s policies” to fight rural poverty. The IDFC, for instance, raises doubts about the sustainability of the project in its India Infrastructure Report 2007. According to Prof Jean Dreze, one of the architects of the NREG and member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, the two big disappointments in the budgets are the allocations for Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) and the Rural Employment Scheme.

“Both are virtually unchanged as a proportion of GDP. If anything, they have declined,” points out Dreze. The universalisation of ICDS, one of the core commitments of the CMP, assumes importance from another angle. The Supreme Court in a December 2006 directive called for the doubling of operational anganwadis by 2008 and wanted the government to ensure that all ICDS services be extended to all children under six. “This cannot be done without increasing financial allocations. The absence of any such increase in the budget is an alarming indication of lack of political commitment to this programme. It is also, in effect, a violation of the court’s order,” he says.

In the case of Rural Employment Guarantee Schemes, it was estimated by the now-defunct National Advisory Council (NAC) that at least around Rs 20,000 crores would be required for the fair implementation of the NREG Act in the country’s 200 poorest districts. However, only Rs 6,000 crores has been spent as of January 2007 and the implementation is also tardy in many states, says Dreze “The need of the hour is not only to expand the number of districts covered by NREGA, but also to raise expenditure levels much close, to the NAC projections. Instead of this, the government proposes to extend NREGA to 330 districts without any increase in expenditure. This is another sobering indication of lack of commitment to flagship programmes and to the rural poor,” says Dreze. TV Mohandas Pai, Director and HR Chief, Infosys, says that the government, instead of so many incremental steps, should have undertaken certain path-breaking initiatives in irrigation and health insurance for the poor. “The government should think of revolutionary steps to catapult the economy into a much higher orbit. For instance, the subsidies for food, fertilizers, kerosene and LPG, which account for about Rs 75,000 crore, can be done away with, and instead, a direct income transfer of Rs 1,000 each, to say 10 crore below-poverty-line families, which the government has already identified, could have been done,” he says. This way, at one stroke, nearly 50 crore people (assuming five people in a family) will get a kind of social security, Pai argues.

While it is debatable whether the government would go in for such innovative methods to address social inequalities, a reality check would be in order. Otherwise, the ghost of India Shining would come back to haunt the UPA government as well.