Spent farce

India has 8.1 million children out of school, 41.6 per cent of its population lives below the poverty line, the maternal mortality rate is 450 per 1,00,000 live births and merely 16 per cent of its labour force has received formal education till the secondary level. This despite years of ambitious flagship programmes, mega investments and tall claims by successive governments.

Blame it on bureaucratic sloth or complacency of policymakers or even outdated delivery mechanisms. The fact is that the power of spin doctors to transform outlays into outcomes is not reflected in the performance of flagship programmes that almost all governments since the '70s have been showcasing. From women and child development schemes to the Sarv Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) to rural employment generation programmes-all are caught in a complex web of delayed decision-making, non-utilisation of funds and sluggishness, against a backdrop of great expectations.

The result: India after more than 60 years of Independence is lagging behind in critical indicators of human development like poverty reduction, universal education, elimination of gender gap and better health for women and children. It also puts India far behind in fulfilling its commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which have 2015 as the deadline for achieving many of these objectives. "Had the projects been better designed, it would have helped meet the MDG goals," says Ashima Goyal, Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research. "The government harps on how allocations have been stepped up in all programmes, but it is not able to spend those outlays. There should be an effort to plug leakages and improve implementation management," she adds.

What is more noteworthy, as pointed out by the latest MDG report, is that some of the world's smallest and poorest countries like Bolivia, Eritrea and Malawi are making the "maximum advances globally in reducing underfive mortality rates by 4.5 per cent annually". Reduction of child mortality by improving nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years and providing pre-school education has been at the core of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) that has been running since 1975. It is the world's largest children's nutrition programme, supposedly reaching out to 72 million children and 15 million mothers through daily nutritional supplements in nearly 1 million anganwadi centres. Yet, India ranks among the countries with the highest under-five mortality rates. "India is lagging behind in the top MDG goal of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, a key indicator of which is the high prevalence of underweight children," says Ashi Kathuria, nutrition specialist, World Bank. Clearly, as Kathuria points out, progress here will depend upon how effectively India is able to scale-up interventions that are known to improve maternal and child nutrition. Allocations have gone up from Rs 3,142 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 8,700 crore in 2010-11.

The issue here really is the government's ability to put the money where its mouth is, says Shreeranjan, joint secretary, Ministry of Women and Child Development. The government needs to spend at least Rs 25,000-30,000 crore to meet the expansion needs of anganwadis whereas the allocation for ICDS in 2010 is Rs 8,700 crore. "The effect of insufficient funds is directly visible on the children attending anganwadis, with 44 per cent suffering from malnutrition," says Shreeranjan.

True, India's spiralling food prices, triggered to some extent by high global prices, have set the clock back on tackling hunger and malnutrition among children, but what's worse is the sheer ineffectiveness of the Mid-Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) launched in 1995. Aimed at enhancing enrolment and retention by improving nutritional levels among students in primary classes, the MDMS reaches out to about 12 crore students with the calorific value of a midday meal at the upper primary stage fixed at a minimum of 700 calories and 20 gm of protein. The allocation has gone up from Rs 1,675 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 9,440 in 2010-11. A Planning Commission survey on the scheme, covering 17 states and 48 districts, however, reveals poor monitoring. Most states do not follow the guidelines of the government to deliver the foodgrain at the school point, resulting in leakages. Neither has the scheme made any significant difference in its core objective of improving enrolment in schools. While beneficiaries in Bihar, Rajasthan and West Bengal complain of inadequate meals at schools, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Karnataka have also registered a drop in fresh enrolments.

Clearly, the Government's gamble that mid-day meals would lead to retention of children in schools has not paid off, taking the shine away from the SSA. Its objective was to bring all children in school, bridge all gender and social category gaps at the primary stage by 2007, achieve universal retention by 2010 and focus on elementary education of satisfactory quality. The outcome after a hike in allocation from Rs 3,057 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 15,000 crore in 2010-11 is modest to say the least. According to Sam Carlson, lead education specialist, World Bank, there is a net enrolment rate of 90 per cent at the primary level, but it is limited to children admitted to grade one. Even bridging gender and social category gaps looks impossible by 2010. India's gross enrolment ratio in primary grades stands at 114.42 for boys and 107.84 for girls in the year 2006-07. Says Carlson who is spearheading the Bank's $1.8-billion commitment to the SSA, "Household surveys have thrown up a figure of about 20 million children enrolling but not attending school. With many primary schools- 12 to 13 per cent-functioning as single-teacher schools, that is one teacher for five grades, the SSA objective of quality elementary education is tough to achieve."

It's not that India lacks resources. The budgetary allocations are pumped up by a cess of 2 per cent on all the central taxes and duties and generous funding by external agencies. Even then, India spends only 3-4 per cent of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on basic needs like education even as the government mulls a hike in infrastructure spending from 4 per cent to 7 per cent of the GDP in the 12th Plan.

The Grade F Report

- India has 49% of the world's underweight children.

- 34% of the world's stunted child population is in India.

- Only 59% of Indian children finish upper primary education.

- India's total workforce comprises only 20% females.

- Only 6.9 million out of 52 million rural households have got 100 days of work under NREGS.

- India spends only 3-4% per cent of its GDP on education and health.

Worse, increased public investment in secondary education remains a low priority in India, that too at a time when trends show a rising demand by industry for skills that require at least a secondary education and which, in turn, will create a vibrant labour force drawing higher salaries. Instead, India's response to the need of creating a well-remunerated labour market has at best been a series of rural employment guarantee schemes like the Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) and the more recent Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS OR NREGS). Launched in February 2006, the NREGS, with an annual outlay of around Rs 40,000 crore provides a guarantee of at least 100 days of employment during a financial year.

"It has benefited over 10.82 crore rural households and the employment generated in 2009-10 is about three times the level achieved from the earlier wage employment programmes," says B.K. Sinha, secretary, Ministry of Rural Development. But NREGS too has fallen prey to corrupt practices like large-scale misappropriation of funds and delayed payments of wages, admits Sinha. According to the Ministry of Rural Development, only 6.9 million out of 52 million rural households had got 100 days work under NREGS. A statement in Parliament cites six cases of diversions pertaining to purchases of pesticides and fertilisers.

It is obvious that India has miles to go before it can boast of its agenda of inclusive growth. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointed out at a Planning Commission meeting earlier this year, the mid-term appraisal of the 11th Plan brings out many deficiencies in the implementation of these schemes, which need to be removed. "Our focus must shift from demanding more resources for expanding schemes to undertaking a serious review of their effectiveness and improving implementation on the ground," said the prime minister.

Many see hope in the Unique Identification project that promises transparency. "The schemes involve a lot of subsidies and transfers and if this project is able to carry out the transfers in a targeted way and weed out intermediaries, it would save a huge amount of resources which would be available for other goals," says Goel.

Resources or not, it is only political will that re-orient the system towards development goals.