Plan Panel opposes finmin's move to axe small schemes

NEW DELHI: Differences appear to be simmering between the finance ministry and the Planning Commission on the number of centrally sponsored schemes that should be continued and supported with funds. Both sides, however, agree that there was a need to identify and prioritise schemes for implementation.

Planning Commission officials say the finance ministry proposal that a number of small schemes should be axed was not an absolutely acceptable solution before the government in its pursuit to set new priorities for development.

Finance minister P Chidambaram, at his meeting with the Commission late July, had said that a clutch of irrelevant and inefficient centrally sponsored schemes should be scrapped and money allocated to these schemes made available to the more efficient and effective ones. Planning Commission sources point out that scrapping of the small programmes and those that had outlived their usefulness would save the government just about Rs 100 crore.

Scrapping the inefficient schemes would not be easy, they point out, explaining many of these programmes serve a certain objective. They feel re-designing and restructuring the scheme to improve the delivery of the objective they are meant to serve will be more useful.

At another level, terminating schemes mid-way would also come for vehement opposition from the states, where structures had been created for implementation of the programmes.

At present, the government funds and monitors about 210 centrally sponsored schemes. The Centre proposes to transfer vast majority of these schemes to the states, as per the commitment made in the Common Minimum Programme.

The Commission feels many of the schemes were started without proper evaluation for the purpose it would serve and therefore, badly designed. And in most cases, although the expenditure on the scheme was monitored, the physical progress and the impact it had was not assessed.

Sources in Yojana Bhawan said that the mid-term appraisal of the 10th plan that would be completed by mid-November would identify schemes and programmes that need to be accorded within a time span. Termination of programmes that had delivered the objectives designed for, could also be prescribed in the appraisal.

Among the programmes that could be accorded priority for the residual portion of the plan period are schemes for watershed management, irrigation, elementary education and nutritious mid-day meal.