An unhappy abundance

If you remain unlucky, you can still lay claim to a house under the Indira Awas Yojana, even before you acquire the means of livelihood. There are schemes for every conceivable need and contingency, be it nutrition, relief, rehabilitation, housing, child care, health, education, counseling, training. You name it, we have it. There are schemes even for those who run these schemes! And the target group includes everybody who is vulnerable: poor women and children, the elderly, destitutes, orphans, disabled, victims of physical violence, drug addicts, widows, slum dwellers, tribals, one could go on and on. The agencies involved are diverse, ranging from the ministry of agriculture to the ministry of tribal affairs.

During 2001-02, there were around 360 such schemes! And the amount transferred is not insignificant as the states received roughly Rs 25,000 crore during 2001-02 for the implementation of CSSs.

Often the same person is a beneficiary of several schemes. It is difficult to identify who is benefiting from how many schemes. Similarly, when it comes to evaluation and monitoring, each scheme is evaluated on a stand-alone basis as if there is no relation between the benefits received under different schemes. In trying not to follow “one size fits all”, we move to the other extreme: we ensure some size definitely fits everybody.

Try administering a quiz on these schemes to any officer in the Planning Commission, and you’re bound to make him or her feel ignorant. How can we expect illiterate beneficiaries or even the schemes’ implementors to know of them?

A holistic approach is needed whereby genuinely needy persons are identified and their basic needs attended to. The approach is bottom-up. Can the Planning Commission design such an approach?

The writer is a senior fellow, ICRIER, New Delhi