Bharat Nirman, the Centre?s massive four-year ?business plan? for improving rural infrastructure, is showing signs of a slowdown.
Data on the allocation of financial resources for six components of the project?roads, telephony, irrigation, water supply, housing and electricity ?reveal a decline in investments.
The Budget estimate for 2008-09 shows a rise of only 16.25 % in investments over the revised estimate of 2007-08. The rise is a full 1% lower than the rise over 2006-07. Compared with the allocation for 2005-06, this is even lower.
The UPA government has, therefore, gone in for a progressively lower hike in the Budget for the Bharat Nirman programme. This means, the spending on these critical sectors is becoming a lower percentage of the government?s aggregate spend.
The mega programme was launched on December 16, 2005 to overhaul rural infrastructure vis-a-vis irrigation, water supply, housing, roads and electrification, with an estimated cumulative investment of Rs 1,74,000 crore until March 2009.
But, going by the latest government data, the cumulative spending under the programme would be Rs 1,61,110 crore, which is a massive 8% lower than the target.
The slower pace of allocation has impacted the development milestones that the programme envisaged.
After the first year of its launch, the spending under Bhrat Nirman grew by 18.44% from Rs 31,042 crore (revised Budget estimates) during 2005-6 to Rs 36,767 crore during 2006-7.
The following year saw a rise in investment of 17.26%. According to the revised estimates, the government will spend around Rs 43,113 crore during the current fiscal. The Budget estimates for the next fiscal (2008-9) indicate that the spending will be around Rs 50,118 crore. Implemented by the various wings of as many as four ministries ? the ministry of rural development, the ministry of water resources, the ministry of communication & information technology and the ministry of power ? the programmed had set a target of providing roads to 38,484 crore villages that have more than a thousand people and all the 20,867 habitations with an average population of around 500 in the hilly areas. Providing telephone lines to all the 66,822 unconnected villages, creating 1 crore hectares of irrigation potential, supplying water to 55,067 uncovered villages, building 60 lakhs houses for the poor and electrifying 1.25 lakh villages have also been targeted.
According to the government?s own assessment, from 2005 until September 2007, only 36.81 lakh houses have been constructed against a target of 60 lakh for 2005-2009. ?It is highly unlikely that in the next one year, the target would be achieved,? a government official told FE.
Even in providing rural roads, the programme is nowhere close to the goal. Targeting to construct 146,185 km of roads during the four years, official data indicate that until September 2007, just 48,215 km of rural roads had been laid. Thus, within the next one-and-half years, more than 99,970 km of rural roads need to be constructed.