Non utilization or partial utilization of funds sanctioned by the Union Ministries for implementing various national level developmental schemes and programmes is not something for which J&K has to be singled out. There are other states where such a situation can arise. But what is exclusive to the J&K State is Government’s penchant for diverting funds from one sector to another without justifying such diversion. This often creates fissures between the actual recipient department or agency and State Finance Department.
Additionally, any national level scheme or project, which our State is also expected to implement, generally carries with it detailed guidelines that are almost mandatory. The reason for the Union Ministries to predicate the scheme with guidelines is that these should account for common national level of development and the implementing agency should have the technical and administrative know-how that would yield optimum results.
It has been generally observed that our State does not play fair with these guidelines and in almost all proposed schemes the State seeks amendments or revision for one reason or the other. If the reasons are cogent, these should be considered to facilitate the State Government to do justice to the project in hand. But the impression of the civil society is that more often than not, amendments sought by the State Government are politically rather than administratively motivated. Actually, the difficulty with the State is that it is not geographically, topographically, culturally and linguistically a homogenous entity. Along with it, economic levels also carry overwhelming divergence. A popular Government has the compulsion of reaching all sections of society, more particularly the deprived and limping segments. That compulsion being the driving force, the State administration would want re-assessment of the mandatory guidelines.
However, this defence of the posture of State Government cannot be admitted in all situations. What is hurting the stakeholders is arbitrary diversion of allocated funds from one sector of expenditure to another sector and that too without producing convincing justification. What can be the compulsions of the Finance Department to do the unwanted act? Doubts can be raised and aspersions can be cast. The case in point is of National Health Mission previously known as National Rural Health Scheme. On the plea that the State Health Department would take full interest in implementing the scheme in the State keeping in mind the guidelines provided, the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare enhanced the grant under this scheme to rupees 500 crore for the ongoing plan. Out of this amount a sum of rupees 113 crore was released for the financial year 2014-15. In order to remove the bottlenecks that hindered free and speedy flow of the funds to the execution agency, the Union Ministry, on the recommendation of the Department of Expenditure, decided to transfer the grants through the treasury route. This was meant to minimize delay in release of funds. But strange as it sounds, out of the amount of first installment of Rs. 113 crore, only rupees 28 crore were released. Despite repeated reminders by State Health Society and the State Department of Health, further funds were not made available. It is learnt that even the staff of Health Society is starved of their salary because Rs 28 crore is nothing beyond peanuts. Concerned authorities are clueless about the reason for withholding the remaining amount. The cumulative result of this irresponsible manner of functioning, in which the health sector has been exposed to starvation, has been taken very seriously by the fund provider agency. We learn that the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare has now stopped release of second and third installment of the grant albeit very reluctantly.
The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare would not be happy with taking punitive measures against the State Government. It is in no way a happy situation. The Ministry would have been happiest if the scheme had been implemented in full and the grants utilized very efficiently. Therefore, the onus has to be borne by the State Government and its agencies particularly the Department of Finance which has arbitrarily and without any convincing logic opted for transfer of funds to other sectors. This is strongly resented by the civil society as diversion of funds is administratively discouraged leading to divisive tendencies… We hope that the State Government will strongly denounce the trend of diverting funds from one head to which it is allocated after due thought to another head whose credentials for receiving the diverted funds are suspect.
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