Programmes fail to deliver

Expressbuzz, Nov 9, 2008

BHUBANESWAR: It was 1995-96 when elections were round the corner, a development saga christened KBK or Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput Plan was unveiled. Its newer version Revised Long Term Action Plan (RLTAP) for the eight KBK comprising undivided Koraput, Balangir and Kalahandi districts was brought in 1998-99 in a sub-plan mode.

Over nine years since, a whopping Rs 7,850 crore has been infused to usher in an all-encompassing development in one of the poorest regions of India that is inhabited by 12 lakh BPL families as high as 87 per cent of the region’s population.

But there has been little change in the situation there. So, what ails KBK - funds or good governance? The latest CAG report makes the latter culpable.

It has categorically stated that the interventions by the State Government to ameliorate the rural poor yielded only negligible results as a XIMB survey found a significant one-quarter of beneficiaries terming RLTAP as complete failure.

From gross non-utilisation of funds to the tune of Rs 221.76 crore during 2002-07 to corruption and maladministration, some glaring instances are: Imprudent approach in the drought-proofing works resulting in a yawning gap of 2.51 lakh hectares between the target and the actual land treated. As many as 1,450 projects were either prematurely closed or remained incomplete.

Non-implementa tion of the watershed projects in accordance with the priority list prepared by the Orissa Remote Sensing and Application Centre (ORSAC) led to Rs 4.42 crore going down the drain. Wages worth Rs 2.66 lakh were lost owing to the execution of works through contractors rather than beneficiaries themselves.

The achievement under rural connectivity was merely 27 per cent of the target. Records show that implementing agencies could not provide one time meal ranging from 28 days (Nabarangpur district) to 186 days (Kalahandi district) per annum. A high of 38 per cent beneficiaries were not satisfied with the quality and quantity of food supplied to them. Still, 402 inaccessible villages were to be covered under the Mobile Health Units programme. Even in some districts, the CDMOs concerned did not have the information regarding inaccessible villages in the districts! F ollowing poor augmentation and capacity addition, migration of labourers has risen to 14,787 in 2005-06 from 8,845 in 2001-02. And, KBK still remains mired in the vicious cycle of poverty-malnutrition-diseases even after a decade.