Leakage of development funds.
Your report, " Rajiv was right: only 16p of re reaches poor" (TOI,15/10) is a severe indictment of Indian state's social sector investment strategy. Writing recently in the New York Times, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman said " How did F.D.R. manage to make a big government so clean ? A large part of the answer is that oversight was built into New Deal programmes from the beginning. The Works Progress Administration (WPA), in particular, had a powerful,independent "division of progress investigation" devoted to investigating complaints of frauds. This division was so diligent that in 1940 when Congressional sub-committee investigated the WPA it couldn't find a single serious irregularity that the division has missed".
The billions of dollars that have been pumped into the US economy by its government in the last one year to stimulate US economy and it is being monitored more diligently than before. Earl Devaney, who heads stimulus monitoring board, is setting up the most complex government website in history which will enable journalists and citizens to monitor every dollar that comes from the government coffers. " The website will unleash a million citizen IGs (Inspectors-General", says Mr.Devaney. The Indian government should follow this example. India has many people of unimpeachable character who can head such a system and one of the software companies in India could be assigned to set up the same. This is more urgent than anything else that the government of India is doing just now as social sector spending is almost Rs.200,000 crore now. Without proper monitoring mechanism, tax-payers money would go to the corrupt politicians and bureaucracy rather than to the intended recipients, the poor.
One wonders whether dole in the form of 100 days of work is the best solution to poverty ? Is it not possible to devise another strategy of empowering people with skills which will enable them to earn their living ? It has been well-said that it is better to teach fishing than give fish.
October 20,2009.
****
