Rural India has not received much attention in allocation of plan outlays in the recent years, despite the well-meaning announcements that the government often makes.

Not only that the shares of agriculture and rural development have gone down in total outlay, but there is also a persistent gap between the intended outlay declared while formulating the plan and the actual amount spent.

During the ninth plan period, the allocation to rural development was targeted to go up to 8.7% of the total plan outlay from 8.3% in the eighth plan.

However, data on outlays available for the first four years of the ninth plan (‘97-98 to ‘00-01) show that the share of rural development has actually fallen to 6.7% of the total plan outlay. Similarly, the share of agriculture in plan outlay has fallen from 5.1% in the eighth plan to 4.5% during ‘97 to ‘01.

On a positive note, irrigation and flood control has got some additional funds. Its share in total plan outlay has increased from 6.5% during the eighth plan to 7.7% during the ninth plan period so far.

The average annual spend for this category has nearly doubled during the ninth plan. Data also reveal a gap in the intended outlay and actual expenditure during every year of the ninth plan period.

On an average, the actual spend on agriculture fell short of the budgeted levels by more than 12%. The slippage was about 9% in case of rural development and about 14% in case of irrigation

. Of course, this problem was a part of the overall fiscal stress, which resulted in similar slippages in the other sectors also. Within agricultural sector, certain programmes have seen even sharper shortfalls.

During the first four years of the ninth plan, animal husbandry received allocation that was 24% lower than the initial provisions. In case of fisheries too, the shortfall was about 18%. Food storage and warehousing already received a meagre 1.6% of the intended plan allocation to agriculture during this period.

But the actual expenditure turned out to be 25% short of the budget estimates. In the total plan outlay on agriculture and allied sectors, more than one-fourth comes from the central plan and the remaining from state plans.

Thus, these sectors have an even lower share in the central plan outlay. In the budget estimates for ‘02-03, for instance, agriculture, irrigation and rural development have been together allocated 8.4% of the central plan outlay, compared to 9.4% spent last year.

With respect to the central plan also, the budgetary allocations rarely matched with the actual expenditure.

Only in the last year (‘01-02) the revised estimates of central plan outlay were fairly close to the budget estimates. In case of rural development, the allocation was about 20% more than what was allocated initially.

In the budget estimate for ‘02-03, however, the share of rural development in total central plan outlay has been scaled down to 5.5% from 6.4% in the revised estimate for ‘01-02. (ruralmural@indiatimes.com)

[ FRIDAY, AUGUST 09, 2002 5:23:58 AM ]
MANGESH SOMAN / ETIG
TIMES NEWS NETWORK