Birthday generosity

Politeness demands that a gift horse is not looked in the mouth. Prime Minister Vajpayee must therefore forgive this newspaper its lack of...

Politeness demands that a gift horse is not looked in the mouth. Prime Minister Vajpayee must therefore forgive this newspaper its lack of social graces in putting his generous birthday gifts to the nation through the scanner. It may be recalled that amidst the ebullience that marked the prime minister8217;s birthday celebrations on Monday, citizens were informed that two new schemes were coming their way: The Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana and the Antyodaya Anna Yojana, the first to improve rural connectivity by building more roads to the hinterland, the second to put food on the table for one crore poor families.

So far so good. There is nothing innately wrong with either of the two proposals. They are noble in intention and grandiose in conception. But wait, isn8217;t this what governments are anyway supposed to do, so what is this exercise of packaging it as a special gift to the people of India on the occasion of a prime ministerial birth anniversary really all about? A closer examination would reveal that this is mere sleight of hand, an attempt by the NDA government in general, and the BJP in particular, to 8220;privatise8221; some of the credit for coming up with such centrally-sponsored schemes. Take something like the roads project, for instance. Wasn8217;t it just a few months ago that the Union finance minister had, in his budget speech, promised the nation a Pradhan Mantri Gramodaya Yojana, with the objective of undertaking rural road construction and improving rural connectivity? The Ninth Plan too envisages linking up all the villages in the country with all-weather roads. In any case, a large part of the expenditureon roads falls upon individual states, so will there not be a lack of coordination and even wasteful overlapping by coming up with a centrally-administered scheme? The same argument holds good for the Antyodaya Anna Yojana. It would have been far better to shore up existing food distribution programmes, including the existing PDS network, than to come up with an entirely new programme which would, if it is to be feasible, demand a committed distribution network all its own.

Therefore, while such shotgun projects may have a feel-good effect, they seldom work. Every Independence Day, prime minister after prime minister has come up with schemes after schemes, only to have them forgotten within a few months. Much like foundation stones that dot the countryside, testifying to forgotten promises, they remain forgotten in dusty files. Take Narasimha Rao8217;s Lal Qila promises of setting aside funds for minorities or upgrading the quality of life in small towns? Remember his mid-day meal scheme announcement that was launched with such fanfare? What about H.D. Deve Gowda8217;s famed Rs 61,000 crore Northeast package? Did even a paise head to this region? And I.K. Gujral8217;s Balika Samriddhi Yojana for the girl child, what happened to that? Is there an administrative black hole somewhere into which all these promises seem to disappear for all time to come? This time, the BJP did one better. Taking a leaf from the Congress book, it put the Vajpayee stamp on state philanthropy!