Our State is now nearly six decades in the process of conceiving, formulating, executing and evaluating developmental projects of various kinds. We are talking of both State sponsored and Centre sponsored projects. This is reasonably good time for our policy planners to have gained vast experience of formulating and executing projects. The experience that has been thus gained needs to be put to practice.
First of all we need to concentrate what have been the major deficiencies that have given us trouble occasionally. The first is inability of planners to keep the time line. It is a recurring problem. Either the initial time line proposed is not carefully calculated or there are some ground situations that hinder completion of the projects in hand. Among the ground realities, more conspicuous is the land acquisition issue which is dogging almost every developmental plan. We have the Land Acquisition Act in place, but despite that, major time is consumed by this item. It means there are lacunae in the Act which disallow expeditious execution of a project. In order to overcome this problem, it should be an option with the Government to examine the need of modifying the Act in a way that acquisition of land and payment of compensation are speeded up. Generally landowners knock at the door of courts for just remuneration. Is it not possible to constitute a tribunal whose decision of remuneration could be challenged only at the level of the Full Bench of the High Court?
The second major issue is of adequate funding, release of funds at proper time, no delay in release of installments, reassessment of cost of expenditure or abandoning of a work in hand by a company for various reasons. Obviously the Project Monitoring Apparatus suggested by the Chief Minister in a recent meeting is the crucial point. Whether it is a Centrally sponsored project or a State sponsored project, in either case the State has no escape from knocking at the door of the Ministry of Finance or other Ministries in New Delhi. What is of importance is that the conditions of financial assistance committed by the Centre have to be honored in any case. If the condition is that next installment of funds will not be released unless the Utilization Certificate is produced, this requirement has to be met. Those responsible for preparation of the document have to be warned of serious consequences of delaying the submission. The monitoring apparatus should not leave the matter to the end of the day but has to be vigilant each day, each week and each month. Those at the helm of affairs have to understand that a project is not merely an upturn of cement and concrete. It has a social tag attached to it. Political leaders sell projects to people but it is a dangerous sale. It can boomerang on them and often it does. .
The quality of material used in projects, the proper technical expertise and feasibility of the project, responsibility of the project withstanding the vagaries of weather etc. are the combined duties of technical cadres and quality control agencies. We have had complaints in a number of projects about sub-standard material used in the project or the project allotted to a company that has not the requisite credentials or has sub-let the project to client firm with inadequate infrastructure etc. are the matters for which layers of monitoring mechanisms would be needed.
The fact of the matter is that the Government has to iron out many angularities to make projects time bound, cost beneficial and technically perfect. Let us not hesitate in saying that we are far away from modern methodology of making a success right from the time of conception to the final stage of making it functional. While we have to develop indigenous expertise and ingenuity, we cannot totally distance ourselves from the big changes that are underway in the project development process in the country.
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