Campaign against Govt's move to cut social sector spending from Nov 30

Questioning the kind of growth model pursued by the Government, civil society activists on Saturday called for a wider public debate on the reported move to curtail social sector spending on schemes such as the rural job guarantee scheme, MGNREGA, and for the HIV affected.

“Considering the fact that the Government is forecasting a 5.3 per cent growth rate for this year, the social sector cuts in Budget raises the question as to what kind of growth is the Government shaping,” economist Prabhat Patnaik said at a press conference held by over 50 civil society organisations, who announced a three-day campaign from November 30 in Delhi under the slogan ‘Abki Baar, Humara Adhikar’.

Cut in HIV budget

Kousalya, who works with HIV infected patients, said the drastic cut of the HIV budget by Rs 485 crore from Rs 1,785 crore could be likened “to a death certificate for the huge number of women, men and children who are living with and affected by HIV”, warning that the Budget crunch may lead to the resurgence of the epidemic.

Admitting that there were systemic problems in some programmes, economist Praveen Jha said that the Government needs to initiate policy measures to address these problems instead of cutting down the fund allocation for social sector schemes.

“Each of these cuts should be discussed in the public domain,” he said, adding that “the Finance Ministry has imposed these cuts without any justification, just to meet their fiscal deficit target of 4.1 per cent.''

Subrat Das of the Centre for Budget Governance and Accountability (CBGA) said”the process of deciding the revised estimates should go through Parliament and discussed in the public domain”.

He said research by CBGA had indicated that the levels of fund utilisation and the quality of expenditure in social sector programmes can be improved significantly by addressing three kinds of problems, viz. poor quality of decentralised planning in schemes, delays in fund flow from the Centre, and inadequate institutional capacity due to shortage of human resources in social sectors.

Rural job scheme

Dipa Sinha of Right to Food Campaign and Nikhil Dey of Jan Awaaz said the Rs 3,000 crore cut sought to be imposed on the rural job scheme was a “gross violation of human rights''. About 10 States have sought more resources from the Union Government in the past couple of months.

The activists said while the Government could be trying to generate funds for some of its initiatives such as Smart Cities, Ganga Rejuvenation, and Swachh Bharat, it should avoid pitting these against other development schemes. “Instead, the Government should try to expand the size of the Union Budget (as a proportion of GDP) by increasing the country’s tax-GDP ratio,” they added.

The participating organisations include the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, Akhil Bhartiya Railway Khan-Pan Licensees Welfare Association, All India Agricultural Labourers' Association, All India Democratic Women's Association, All India Progressive Women Association, Chhattisgarh Kisan Majdoor Andolan, Ekta Parishad, Green Peace, Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Campaign, Jan Swasth Abhiyan, Pension Parishad, and Right To Food Campaign.

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