Wada Na Todo Abhiyan Takes up People’s Mid Term Appraisal of Five Year Plan in India

Five Year Plans are integral parts of Indian macro policy making. The government budgets and many other target oriented activities of the government of India revolve around the FYPs in India. In India, FYPs focus on targeted interventions towards creating new capacities in the production and distributional functions among the socio-economic entities in the economy. It is a medium term strategy of the government of India to provide social and economic justice to the common people in India. It is a process to achieve desired goals for equity and justice along with economic prosperity. Currently, the economy is going through Eleventh Five Year Plan to continue till 2012 aiming at inclusive growth for the nation.

The process of a mid term of appraisal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan is currently underway. The Planning Commission is expected to present a detailed assessment of the performance of the economy as a whole as well as the performance in individual sectors in comparison with the targets set in Eleventh Five Year Plan by December 2009. So far, the mid term appraisals have always been n international affair of the Planning Commission in India. This year, the internal appraisal process will also take into account what people say on it.

In this regard, an alliance of civil society organizations with Wada Na Todo Abhiyan have come forward to assist the review process of the government by providing an assessment of the performance of the ongoing plan from a people’s perspective. To prepare such assessment, WNTA- a national coalition of more than 3750 civil society and community based organisations and groups across 29 states and Union Territories in India have come together to undertake massive consultations with common people and programme implementing agencies at village, districts and state level institutions of governance. The basic purpose of WNTA in undertaking this mammoth task is to consolidate voices of the marginalized sections of our society in reviewing the policies of the government. The Appraisal will seek to build a strong evidence base to critically assess the functioning of the Plan and thereby suggest future directions.

There has been an increase in the proportion of plan expenditure in the Union Budget in recent times. Compared to only around 27 percent of the total union government expenditure on average during the Tenth Plan period, it has increased to more than 31 percent in the first two years of the Eleventh Five Year Plan. While, this is a positive indication that our government in the current plan has put an emphasis on new works and capacity creation in the sector, how much of it actually got translated into the well being of the common people is an issue the People’s mid team appraisal by the Wada Na Todo Abhiyan (WNTA) seeks to assess. Already there are some issues related to the quality of expenditure being undertaken through the Plans. As can be seen from the budget documents of the Union Government, between 2002-03 (beginning of the Tenth Plan) and 2009-10 (third year of the Eleventh Plan) the total plan expenditure through Union Budget increased three fold from around Rs. 111470 Crore to Rs. 325149 Crore which can be considered as a substantial leap. But during the same time, the proportion of plan expenditure on capital heads increased by only 17 percent compared to a four fold increase in the recurring part of it. This indicates that the basic purpose of creating new capacities has been marred by efforts to focus on those types of activities that involve wages, salaries, and payments of recurring nature, instead of any serious asset building measures. Many argue that the electoral motives of the policy makers to remain in power are a critical factor of such anomaly. One may also find an increasing significance of Centrally Sponsored Schemes as against a sustainable sectoral approach and bypassing of the federal structure of the country as a factor contributing to this anomaly.

The planning process in India also encompasses a broader vision of social justice. Accordingly, efforts were made in the past to allocate specific proportion of the Plan expenditure towards direct benefit of those marginalized sections of our population whose specific issues of deprivation is not taken care of in the generalist approach of the five year plans. Some such special efforts include the Scheduled Caste Sub Plan (SCSP), Tribal Sub Plan (TSP) and the Women Component Plan (WCP). Unfortunately, these special efforts have mostly remained neglected throughout the plan period. Wada Na Todo Abhiyan in its attempt to review the implementation of the Eleventh Five Year Plan shall have lenses of deprivation and interests of the marginalized sections of our population such as the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Women and Minorities as the axis around which the people’s mid term appraisal of the Eleventh Five Year Plan would evolve.

The Wada Na Todo process is expected to evolve a set of suggestions that may help our policy makers to assess the plan from a people’s perspective.