EDITORIAL
ON AN EVEN KEEL
Of late, sections of
Indian press have been speaking of warming up of Indo-US
ties. There have been a few goody-goody remarks by some
of the officials in the State Department, which could
make Indians ecstatic. There is no denial of the fact
that for five long decades, Indo-American relations were
marked by certain degree of reservation, skepticism and
suspicion. It was partly the result of US' lack of
understanding of India's freedom struggle against a
colonial power and partly because of frozen relations
between two super powers of cold war era. But perennial
acrimony and divergence of views have not always
frustrated Indo-American relations. There are some areas,
and not insignificant ones, in which the two countries
did not fail to see eye to eye with each other. The
essential complaint of the Indian side has been that the
US has always tried to equate India with Pakistan, he
archival in South Asia. India has been calling it unjust
and irrational. After all a country that has been nursing
democratic and secularist ideology with her sweat and
blood cannot be and should not be equated with a country
that has been hopping in and out of democratic and
martial law dispensations. Had the US herself been a
country ruled by the military generals, then placing
India and Pakistan on an even keel would have some
rationale.
Towards the closing years
of Clinton administration, some slight change in the US
attitude towards was discerned. The visit of President
Clinton to India and his short halt in Pakistan was a
visible indication that there was a shift in the US
policy towards the two countries. But this did not speak
too loudly for a pro-Indian stance. Nevertheless, Kargil
and its aftermath reinforced the American perception that
the US needed to rethink her Indian policy as an
instrument of peace in South Asia. Thus responsible
persons like Karl Inderfurth and Strobe Talbott at the
State Department did not hide the fact that closer ties
with India would be in the interests of US as well. With
the change of guard in the White House, observers noticed
that there was definitely an objective thinking at the
State Department as to what should be the nature of
relations between the two countries.
Some Indian circles have
taken the coming closer as Washington's expression of
displeasure of Pakistan for her pro-terrorist and
fundamentalist overtures. Despite the facet that American
officials have always and without reservation said it
repeatedly that America is interested in her own
interests more than appeasing one or displeasing the
other. This has been very clearly stated by Mr Richard
Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State in a recent
interview to an Indian newspaper. It should be known that
Pakistan has been the old time ally of the US. They share
many secrets of cold war era between themselves. In the
words of a late President of Pakistan, she has been more
allied than ally. The US has always had special relations
with Pakistan. It was Pakistan that ironed out the
differences between the US and China when they forged
close camaraderie against the then Soviet Union. Had not
Pakistan played the game of the US, Soviet Union would
not have met with its collapse. It was the American
outright support at the UN Security Council and other
world for that made Pakistan stake its claim on Kashmir.
The US closed her eyes to Pakistan ceding 5000 square
kilometers of Aksaichin region in Kashmir to China. The
US turned a blind eye to Pakistan-China project of
building the Karakorum Highway in contravention of
international law because Kashmir, in the eyes of the US
was a disputed area. The US not only turned a blind eye
to Pakistan clandestinely obtaining vital nuclear and
missile technologies from China, Korea and other
countries, it never brought Pakistan on the list of
terrorism sponsoring countries despite a plethora of
evidence before her. And above all, the US official
circles, while commenting on the fragile economic
condition of Pakistan stated in no ambiguous words that
the US would not allow Pakistan to collapse. In this
background, Indian observers euphoric about the warming
up of Indo-US relations are forgetting the lessons of
history. Mr Armitage has made it clear, if one reads
between the lines that "the US was eager to craft a
newer and qualitatively better relationship with Pakistan
that would not be tied to any strategic calculus."
Indian leadership should accept the fact that the US is
not going to change her attitude towards Pakistan because
of the former's developing relations with India.
Therefore for all times to come, Washington will place
India and Pakistan on an even keel. At the same time,
respective interests will guide US' bilateral relations
with each country, regionally and globally.
SPECIAL STATUS
Kashmir and Assam are the
two states that are likely to get special status with the
Union Government with retrospective effect. This is
essentially in terms of economic aid and developmental
plans. The matter has come to be discussed loudly
following the visit of Mr K C Pant, the Interlocutor. Mr
Pant is the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission,
the main agency of Government of India responsible for
development schemes and plans on national level. From a
few hints dropped by Mr Pant after his visit to J&K
State one suggest that at least he has realised the part
played by economic underdevelopment of Kashmir in the
insurgency upswing. In this connection, he has been more
impressed by the backwardness of Kargil and Ladakh
regions. If the purpose of Mr Pant's visit is to be
gauged in terms of his first hand study of economic
deprivations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir; we think
the mission has been a success. Nobody ever was too naive
to believe that Pant's marathon meetings in all the three
regions of the State were going to be of any meaning and
help in resolving the Kashmir issue. His talks with a
cross section of people may have been only a mask. In
fact he wanted to know what were the economic debilities
with which the State was faced and to what extent these
could be overcome. For example, he has spoken of the
importance of electric power supply to the State. This
area has been almost under siege. The State Government
owes an enormous amount to the national power grid. If Mr
Pant is able to solve the power problem of the State, we
may assure him that half the battle in Kashmir is won.
Power stimulates industrialisation. It means harnessing a
large segment of the youth in the State. While the
Government is not provide employment to the youth and
remove unemployment, industrialisation will bring about a
marked change in the economic sphere of the State. The
State needs cheap and abundant electric power. We
understand that there is considerable shortfall in power
production on national level. But Kashmir is a special
case where something more than usual has to be done.
There are others areas to which Mr Pant may like to
address and it is welcome. The Planning Commission, while
considering special status for J&K, should also point
towards accountability.
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Meeting
energy crisis
By
Ramnik Chawla
Renewable
sources of energy have gained importance
these days because of ever increasing
demand of energy and the global concern
regarding deterioration of environmetal
conditions due to large scale use of
fossil-fuel based systems. Renewable
energy technologies having their primary
sources from solar energy and biomass
energy can play a major role in near
future.
The world
energy demand will triple over the next
decade and the developing countries will
account for above 40 percent of world
energy demand as compared to current
share of 25 percent.
In case
these future demands are to be met
through fossil-fuel based resources and
the current technologies, we could face a
significant increase in emission of
global green house gases, a situation
which could cause severe disturbances in
the planet's eco system. This would also
prepetuate the dependence of developing
countries on imported energy which would
diminish the prospects for investment in
other sectors of their economics for
sustainable development. Our energy
system has to be changed from a fossil
fuel system into a solar one.
The state
is blessed with abundant supply of
renewable sources namely :-
(i)
Bio-gas plants (ii) Biomass, (iii)
Improved Chullahs, (iv) Solar Energy, (v)
Small Hydro (vi) Wind energy.
Even a
fraction of these resources is sufficient
enough to provide an alternative for
meeting our energy requirements.
Bio-Gass
system
An aerobic
decomposition of city sewage, animal dung
and distillery spent wash can be carried
out extensively to get manure and methane
rich combustible gases. The gases
containing 55-60 percent Methane and 40
per cent carbon Dioxide plus impurities
such as Hydrogen Sulphide can be used for
thermal and power generation application.
For electrical generator system such as
Diesel Engine, Gas engine and gas turbine
are being used. Moreover, there is one
major problem of purifying the gases
especially Hydrogen Sulphide. Generation
of Methane rich biogas and its
utilisation for power generation has
great potential in the state both for
energy and for the management of
environment. Apart from liquid effluents,
the Jammu city generates several thousand
of Municipal solid wastes (MSW). The per
capita generation is about 300 to 500 gms
per day. The waste can be biodigested in
reactors and or deposited in well
engineered sanitary landfills. Land fill
technology has advanced very rapidly over
the past decade. Landfill can generate
biogas normally after 3 years of dumping
for the next 30 years. These gases can be
used for generating power. As a thumb
rule, million tonnes of MSW can produce 1
MW of power.
Bio
Mass Energy
Bio mass
is a natural product of solar energy and
therefore, a renewable of carbon and
Hydrogen which are the basic constituents
of energy. Even though the total
renewable bio mass reserves of energy far
exceeds the total energy requirement, the
volume exploitation remains limited
because of low cost of fuels, the
hetrogenous nature of biomass and the
area over which the biomass must be
collected for large scale application.
For most of developing countries, devoid
of oil resources; biomass is a necessity.
Compared to coal and oil, the carbon and
hydrogen constituents in biomass are
highly oxygenated which are responsible
for their lower heating values. The
varying moisture and ash contents and
comparatively lower bulk densities are
additional constraints to their
utilisation for energy. Bio mass feed,
especially, agro-residues is available in
different forms, such as husks, straw and
stalks of various and numerous crops.
Inorder to enhance the effective
utilisation of these materials, it
becomes necessary to prepare these
materials. These processes comprise
drying, communication, compaction and
carbonisation to produce clean fuels.
Domestic
Sector Technologies of immediate concern
to the State is the conservation of wood
resources. These could be achieved by
reforestation programme, and the
widespread dissemination of improved wood
stores (Improved Chullahs).
It has
been estimated that it is 22 times
cheaper to save wood by using improved
cook stories, by planting and growing
trees, although plantation has many other
ecological benefits and needs to be
continued.
Since the
direct burning of Agro-residues in loose
form is highly inconvenient and
polluting, the residues could be
converted into a carbonised, biomass
briquettes. The briquettes should be in
the form of beehive having 12-19 vertical
holes each one acting as pseudo-gasifier.
Although similar briquettes from coal are
extremely popular outside, those made of
Agro-residues are more easily ignitable,
convenient to use and give a sustained
clean combustible similar to domestic
cooking gas.
Direct
use of Solar energy
The solar
energy systems are being upgraded to
improve the reliability and efficiency
with corresponding reduction of their
costs. They are used for energy and power
through thermal of photovoltic route.
Bio-mass
energy conversion systems must be
modernised to provide modern and
environmentally sound fuels that can meet
the growing demand of industrial and
domestic application. Based on Agro
residues and sustainable energy
plantation such systems can alleviate
deforestation and reduce plantation such
systems can alleviate deforestation and
reduce dependence on fossil fuel. These
can also reduce carbon dioxide levels in
atmosphere.
Bio-mass
should be considered not only as
renewable source of energy but also as a
feed stock.
A balanced
system of taxes and subsidies is needed
to enable modernised bio-mass fuels and
power to compete in energy markets.
Hidden subsidies to the power sector and
to fossil fuels should be reduced or
similar subsidies should be provided to
the bio-mass energy considering its
social and environmental benefits.
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Russia
wants in Indian Hug
By
Abhishekh Singh
Under
pressure from a rapidly changing world
situation, Russia and India are
transcending their traditional
relationship and moving toward a much
more equal form of strategic partnership.
Decisions taken at the first-ever joint
Government commission on military
cooperation, supervised by
Defence-Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh
and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Ilya
Klebanov (June 4-6), may have
far-reaching consequences for our two
countries, and for the global strategic
balance. In the old relationship, Russia
basically sold Soviet-designed weapons to
India. Over recent years India has also
been taking a share of the production in
the form of licensing agreements, as with
the recent Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter and
the T-90 tank deals. But the new
arrangements will have India in on the
ground floor, participating in design,
development, production and perhaps even
strategic planning. The most sensational
aspect of this is a Russian pledge, soon
to be forthcoming, to build an advanced
Missile Defence (MD) system for India.
It is
actually painful for Russian leaders to
accept this, because it means giving up
the last of superpower illusions as well
as relinquishing military-technological
control and independence. But the Kremlin
is moving bravely toward it, for at least
two very good reasons. First, Russia is
deeply alarmed over recent US efforts to
woo India with offers of arms sales and
other forms of cooperation.
India has
shown a markedly different attitude
toward the American MD project floated by
President George W Bush in May. Efforts
by Moscow to synchronise its reaction
with India have so far failed. For
instance, a meeting between Jaswatn Singh
and Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov
on June 4 ended without a common
statement on NMD, though Ivanov is said
to have pressed very hard for one. Hence,
Russia feels it necessary to tie India
more closely in strategic interests, and
that means giving it a much bigger piece
of the pie.
The offer
to build an MD umbrella for India, though
vague and perhaps impossible to deliver,
is clearly designed to bring Delhi back
into Russia’s strategic camp –
but at a higher level than ever before.
The second reason is that Russia can
simply not afford to go it alone on arms
production any longer. Unlike his
predecessor, President Vladimir Putin has
been practical enough to admit that
"our military-industrial complex is
in shambles. The brain drain of the past
ten years has emptied out many of our
best design bureaus. The infrastructure
of sub-contractors, who make crucial
parts of most weapons systems, has
evaporated. Experts say that barely 10
per cent of the 1,700 military plants
that were churning out armaments in the
USSR a decade ago are still functioning.
Almost all the weapons Russia has been
using, and selling abroad, over the past
several years have been pulled from old
Soviet warehouses. If the Russian armed
forces are to be eventually equipped with
a new generation of weaponry, there are
few choices. We can either join the ranks
of countries who purchase their arms from
the West, or else we must find a great
deal of fresh financing, advanced
technology and new sources of brainpower
with which to rebuild our
military-industrial machine. That’s
why Russia is turning to India, China,
and even to Israel with radical new
offers of cooperation."
The
projects on the table really are
impressive, and they offer many real
advantages for India. The Russian
proposal on MD is amorphous and lacking
in technical detail, but so is the
American one. But the fact remains
countries that are first in these
technologies will be military and
economic leaders in the next century.
Russia brings some expertise in lasers,
rockets and radars to the table, and has
existing hardware like the advanced S-300
anti-aircraft system, which could be
modified to shoot down missiles. Indian
knowhow in computers and some other areas
would be vital to creating a Russian-led
MD project. Delhi should ask itself
frankly who is likely to give Indian
scientists, engineers and factories a
bigger share of this activity, Russia or
the US? I think the answer is obvious.
At the
June Moscow talks it was decided to work
together to build a new multi-role
transport plane, the Ilyushin II-214,
which could go into production within a
few years. This is a good example of how
Russia and India can achieve synergy in
military development and procurement.
Both countries will need a new generation
military transport that combines
old-fashioned lifting power with
short-take off and the capability to land
on rough airstrips.
Russia has
an existing design, the Antonov AN-70,
which can be developed using the
resources of both countries. Further down
the road are even more exciting projects.
Russia has long been working on a
so-called "fifth generation"
heavy fighter, to replace the current
crop of Sukhoi models. The Su-30MKI
currently going into production for India
is a "fourth generation" plane.
The Russian government wants the
futuristic new fighter to be comparable
to the US-led Joint Strike Fighter
project being funded by several Western
countries.
The
Russian plan was to have a prototype of
the new plane flying by 2006, but there
is simply not enough funding. So, Moscow
is approaching both China and India in
hopes of internationalising the project.
The same situation exists in development
of a new generation of submarines for the
Russian Navy. The idea of joint
cooperation in this field was discussed
with Jaswant Singh in Moscow, and will
undoubtedly come up again. If these
initial ideas take off, the room for
expansion may be limitless.
Other
partners may be brought in. For example,
Russia has been trying to sell its old
Beriev A-50 early warning plane, but even
regular customers like India and China
aren’t buying. It’s a good
platform, similar to the American AWACS
system, but the old Soviet electronics
and radars are simply not up to
today’s challenges. So, there is a
tentative agreement to sell India several
Russian A-50EI aircraft, which will be
fitted out with Israeli electronic
systems. Israel is a leader in this field
and, although there has been very little
publicity about this, Israel’s
military-technical cooperation with its
old enemy Russia has been growing rapidly
of late.
A
revolution is shaping up in global
security and strategic alignments, These
practical arrangements concerning weapons
development and manufacture may well
herald big political shifts to come.
(INAV)
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Australia:
Karma Chameleon
By Neena Bhandari
Born in the
eastern Indian city of Kolkata to an Indian
mother and a Welsh father, growing up in England
and now living in Sydney with her Australian
husband, Bem Le Hunte's life spans across three
continents and cultures.
Much of what Hunte
experienced in these different cultures can now
be found in her debut novel, 'Seduction of
Silence', which weaves five generations of an
Indian family through different continents. Some
critics have compared 'Seduction of Silence' -
scheduled for its India launch this week - with
Salman Rushdie's `Midnight's Children' and Vikram
Seth's `A Suitable Boy'.
With a beaming
smile and her hair cascading down to her knees,
Hunte says, "I was born with a wanderlust.
My journeys were a process of discovering. This
fluidity of movement is reflected in my
writing."
The protagonists
in her novel are women. The men walk away from
their property, responding to spiritual callings
that lead them to vanish into the wilderness. It
is the women who are left to cope with children
born out of wedlock, adulterous husbands and
cultures in which they never altogether fit.
Hunte's characters
have a biographical note. "My mother was
studying English Literature in Cambridge when she
met my father. In fact, my brother was born two
months before her final exams. My grandfather,
who was a business magnate owning iron-ore mines
in the Indian state of Orissa, sent an `ayah'
(maid) from India to look after them and then
persuaded my parents to come and live in
India," she says.
"I was born
in Kolkata and studied in the Mongrace Montessory
School until I was five, when my parents decided
to return to England. My father, an
eight-language linguist, was not interested in
running the family business," adds Hunte.
"It was an
absolute contrast of lifestyles. While in India,
we were pampered and indulged, treated like
little princesses; in the UK we were a struggling
middle-class family. My mother found it difficult
to adjust to the English lifestyle. She took us
to Christmas choir and celebrated Diwali (an
Indian festival). We hadn't ever been fully
Indian in India and we were certainly not British
in England. Every summer, we returned to India
for a six-week holiday," recalls Hunte, the
youngest of four siblings.
Hunte's parents,
however, divorced when she was 22. "My
mother taught us Indian values, which is
something that has stayed with me as an adult. I
meditate twice a day and religiously perform
yoga," she says. But reaching this kind of
serenity in life has not been easy. Says Hunte,
"In England we were not fully accepted
because of my parents' multi-racial marriage. We
were teased as `Pakis'. Those were the days of
`Rock against Racism' concerts. By the mid-'70s,
the attitudes towards people from the
sub-continent began to change. We became cultural
schizophrenics with different experiences in
different countries. This concept of
self-invention is a product of different
cultures, which has given me more insight."
It was to get away
from the oppressive yuppie attitude in England
that Hunte headed for Sydney. From a backpacker's
hostel in Kings Cross, she rang a number given by
a friend of an expatriate family from New Papua
Guinea. Nadia Goldski (now her sister-in-law)
invited her to dinner and within a few minutes
suggested that Hunte move in. "In a way she
arranged for her brother, Jan, and me to fall in
love. It was virtually an arranged marriage. We
had a civil ceremony here and then a proper Hindu
wedding in Delhi. We then went on a communal
honeymoon taking camel safaris, camping under the
stars in the deserts of Rajasthan in India,"
says Hunte.
An anthropologist
turned advertising copywriter, Hunte has also
worked in the music industry and for Indian
television before trying her hand at fiction. She
was offered the Asia Link Scholarship and the New
South Wales Art and Australia-India Council
backed her for her debut book.
"Writing for
me is a very spontaneous process. I started this
book in the foothills of the Himalayas, pregnant
with my second son, Rishi, and completed it in my
home in Paddington in Sydney," she says
adding that each anecdote in her life is an
experience, which finds its way in the book. Her
characters are people she has met over the years.
"Living for a
year in a little known village in the Himalayas
was an experience. Many Western comforts were
absent, but life seemed so complete. One needs to
get away from the West to get a perspective of
the Western culture. Only when your life comes
full circle that things begin to make
sense," says Hunte.
But cathartic
though the experience of writing `Seduction of
Silence'was, Hunte has moved away from it and is
already on her second novel for which she has
been researching in Kolkata, "wandering the
streets notebook in hand, making sure that no
experience is wasted on me in this inspiring
city".(WFS)
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Curtailing
Govt. expenditure
By S.V. Vaidyanathan
The Planning
Commission has mooted the long-overdue suggestion
that the proliferating paraphernalia called
"Centrally sponsored schemes" be
reviewed with a rational candour. It is not only
because these schemes consume large public funds.
The tremendous duplication and redundancy which
they involve besides well-known seepages of funds
and the virtual suspension of accountability call
for a new order of rationalization in terms of
redefining the pattern of Centre-State economic
relations to subserve better the larger causes of
the poor trapped in deprivation of various forms.
Efforts over the
last ten years to contain non-Plan expenditure
have largely come unstuck. To a great extent, the
principal constituents of this category of
expenditure, namely, subsidies, interest payment
and defence – which together account for
around 54 per cent of the total expenditure
– do not lend themselves to pragmatic much
less drastic correction. Interest payments have
been ballooning over the years mainly because
growing fiscal deficits have crystallized into
huge mountains of public debt. In 2000-01, for
instance, interest payments claimed Rs.101,266
crores of total resources, that is, 30 per cent
of the total receipts of the Government,
including borrowings.
The experience
since the liberalization process started in 1991
has been that subsidies do not subside. Nor do
establishment expenditure and defence spending
abate as percentages of non-Plan expenditure
regardless of the constraints of resources or the
changing perceptions of the external security
environment. Rather than chase the mirage of the
so-called "strong political will"
needed to reprioritize public expenditure, would
it not be more practical for the policymakers to
do away with the fallacious dichotomy as between
development expenditure and the so-called
non-development component of expenditure? And to
look at the whole gamut of Central expenditure
which is dubiously glorified as "Plan
expenditure"?
In the
"Command and Control" economy of the
past, a lot of unjustifiable aura surrounded the
category called "Plan expenditure,"
under the mistaken notion that any expenditure
which related to the Annual Plan was <I
>ipso
facto<P> "strategic" merely
because it had passed scrutiny at the hands of an
omniscient Planning Commission! It has indeed
been an enduring myth that if only the Finance
Minister would provide for larger budgetary
support for the Plan outlay, the public interest
would be better served and the cause of fiscal
prudence as well! Granting that Plan expenditure
has been hovering around 25 per cent of the total
expenditure of the Centre (with the lion’s
share being taken by non-Plan expenditure), there
are many areas where economies in expenditure
appear to be feasible perhaps with enhanced
effectiveness of expenditure.
Consider the
situation in 2000-01. Plan expenditure amounted
to Rs.88,100 crores (26 per cent of total
expenditure). Of this, Rs.34,623 crore
represented Central assistance for States and
Union Territories for their annual Plans. The
larger portion, Rs.48,269 crores, of Plan
expenditure went towards financing the Central
Plan.
The anatomy of
Central Plan expenditure reveals that sectors
such as Energy and Transport (covering Roads,
Railways and Civil Aviation) besides
Communications loomed large. These sectors, by
their very nature, engage the constant attention
of the Centre which perforce must accept
responsibility for implementation of the various
projects included in the Central Plan. But then
there are sectors such as Agriculture, Rural
Development and Social Services (covering
education, health, family welfare and so forth)
which also are included in the ambit of the
Central Plan even though these subjects fall
within the purview of the States as adumbrated in
the Constitution.
The
"Concurrent List" has often been
leveraged by the Centre to force the States into
a pattern of national conformity regardless of
regional diversity. The crux of the issue is that
a broad component of the Centre’s Plan
expenditure relating to "State
subjects" has been a "grey area"
– expenditure which is sourced from Central
funds but incurred mostly on schemes designed by
the policymakers at the Centre for "uniform
implementation" by all the State
governments.
The Centre
formulates the schemes with or without
consultation with the States and undertakes
implementation through the State governments and
funding them through special assistance even
apart from other forms of devolution of funds.
In theory, the
Centre is accountable to Parliament for Plan
expenditure in its entirely. In reality, a large
part of the expenditure routed through State
governments, zilla parishads and even gram
sabhas, for securing "performance" of a
plethora of Central schemes and "Centrally
sponsored schemes" (CSS), goes virtually
unaccounted for.
The wonder is that
with all these all-too-well-known slippages and
leakages, Plan expenditure continues to command
expert veneration!
The Planning
Commission, in its recent "Approach Paper to
The Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-2007)", has
offered a detailed, if unsparing, critique on the
whole range of Centrally-sponsored schemes (CSS)
which number 210 at present.
For one thing, the
Commission draws upon the report of the
Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) of India
for 1999, on the implementation of a few CSS. The
CAG report brings out the common shortcomings in
the execution of CSS.
Some of the terms
of disapproval used by the CAG in this context
are "uncontrolled and open-ended"
execution "without quantitative and
qualitative and qualitative evaluation of
delivery", "overstatement" of
physical and financial performance by the State
governments, the ministries at the Centre
"more concerned with expenditure rather than
the attainment of the objectives," misuse of
funds and lack of accountability.
The litany is not
new-fangled. But as the Planning Commission puts
it. "There are far too many schemes to be
monitored", "a number of schemes have
similar objectives targeting the same
population," there is
"unwillingness" on the part of the
Central ministries "to accept poor
performance, for fear of being questioned by
Parliament or adverse press publicity".
How mechanical
imposition of CSS on States (which are lured by
fungible funds floating around) has put paid to
many such schemes is well summed up by the
Commission. "Uniformity of schemes all over
the country from Mizoram to Kerals, without
sufficient delegation to States to change the
schemes to suit local conditions, leads to a
situation where the States even knowing that the
scheme is not doing well become indifferent to
its implementation."
Could the CSS be
phased out in the next three years, not so much
for avoiding government intervention through
socio-economic processes as for ensuring
cost-effective public spending attuned to local
needs rather than to political populism? INAV
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