Low level of social sector spending cannot be blamed for all the challenges India is facing. There are problems like mismanagement or underutilization of allocated funds.
Loopholes in spending:-
- MGNREGA budget of Tamilnadu was 4 times of Bihar’s budget, while number of rural poors in Bihar are six times of Tamilnadu.
- Government spend a large amount on Public Distribution system but problems like faulty inclusions, ghost cards, large scale leakages and diversion of subsidized grains led to failure of system.
- ICDS has placed priority on food implementation rather than on nutrition and health education interventions.
- Whereas many wings of government are overstaffed, key public services like education, healthcare services, police and judiciary are starved of regular employees.
- Due to colonial influence, administrative accountability in India has always been internal and upwards and accountability to the people has always been very limited.
- Inflated reporting has make it difficult to identify the real no. of needed person in a category, for ex GOI received data of only 2% malnourished children of 0-3 yrs age, compared to 9.4% reported by UNICEF.
- Bulk of the expenditure in education and health typically flows to the salaries of teachers and health workers, yet rampant absenteeism means that services are not effectively provided in many cases.
- There are huge shortages of staff at all levels affect implementation and supervision of program.
Way forward for government:-
- Outward accountability to the public is essential for greater responsiveness and improved social quality
- Setting up a mechanism to collect accurate data on intended beneficiaries.
- Powers of transfers of class should be with head of department not with the government.
- Efforts should be made to identify surplus support staff, set-up an effective redeployment plan and devise system for exit.
- At least for the higher ranks of the civil services e.g. chief secretory and DGP, postings may be made contractual for a fixed period of atleast 2 years
