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The role of
what in economic parlance are called ‘Social Sectors’ is
considered critical in this regard. Social sector activities are
often considered to be those which emphasize improvement of
quality of life by offering education, employment and health
facilities to that part of the population, who are less
privileged and who suffer from malnutrition, high death rates
and disease, low income and lack of education and who live below
the poverty level. Therefore, in summary, development involving
the social sector has two important aspects: Firstly, if
involves ‘quality of life’ related activities and, Secondly,
these activities are directed towards a certain section of the
population, namely, the poor. There are two approaches in
addressing the issues of Social Sector Development like human
resource approach and human development approach. In human
resource approach social sectors may be defined as all those
sectors, which contribute to an enhancement of human capital.
Human capital refers to the fact that human beings invest in
themselves through education, in-service training, nutrition and
health so as to raise their life expectancy through lifetime
earnings. Human development approach emphasized providing for
all people the basic means of well being which include among
other things, food, health and education. The first major
initiative towards social sector development began in Fifth
Plan, with the launching of Minimum Needs Programme (MNP), which
is a package including elementary education, health, water
supply, roads, electrification, housing and nutrition. For
instance, in the Sixth Plan Adult education was added to MNP and
in the Seventh Plan, rural domestic energy, rural sanitation and
public distribution system were also included as part of MNP.
It is
increasingly being recognized that good health is an important
contributor to productivity and economic growth, but it is,
first and foremost, an end in itself. In a poor country like
India, where the only asset most people have is their physique,
health assumes even greater significance. The Indian state has
articulated this responsibilities often enough. Since
Independence, the government, ostensibly driven by socialistic
goals, has expressed its intention to discharge this
responsibility in one five-year plan after the other. Allocation
for health sector as percentage of plan outlays has declined
from 3.3 per cent during First Plan to 1.0 per cent in 1997-98
annual plan. In Seventh and Eighth Plan it averaged to only 1.7
per cent. Further, there is a wide gap between per capita
expenditure on health for rural and urban health services;
spending on urban health has been 3 to 4 per cent higher than
rural health across the states.
India began its
journey towards the goal of universal and free basic education
little more than fifty years age with the Indian Constitution
stating, ‘The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period
of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for
free and compulsory education for all children until they
complete the age of fourteen years’. The struggle to meet this
basic commitment began forthwith. But conditions then were
really dismal. Providing elementary education for all, with an
ever-burgeoning population, has not been an easy task. However,
the network of primary schools has expanded significantly. An
estimated 95 per cent of the rural population living in 826,000
habitations has access to a primary school within a radius of 1
km and about 85 per cent of the population has an upper-primary
school within a radius of 3 km. Though there are nearly 150
million children currently enrolled in primary schools, there
were an estimated 35 million children who were not going to
school in 1997; the number is likely to have increased to around
40 million by 2000.
Weakening
agricultural performance in large number of states is a national
concern. The irrigation sectors are faced with many challenges.
Institutional weakness in the water agencies combined with
minimal participation of farmers and other users impeded greater
improvement in quality of service delivery. The poor quality of
water service delivery reduced farmers’ incentives to pay water
charges. On average, small and marginal farmers in India
comprise about 82 percent of the farmers who use canal
irrigation, but they cultivate only about half of the area that
is irrigated by canals.
Widespread
unemployment and underemployment are the cause of social unrest
in many parts of the country. At present, the composite
incidence of unemployment and underemployment, as captured by
the current daily status (CDS) basis, stands at 9 per cent of
the labour force. Among the younger age group, unemployment is
13 per cent. This means that additional 35 million persons join
the ranks of the unemployed every year.
The poor and
the disadvantaged in this country face other kinds of problems
such as untouchability, exploitation, deprivation and
displacement. The problems faced by tribals, the SCs, the OBCs
or the minorities are complex and acute. In many parts of the
country, these communities are not only exploited but are
displaced from their respective economic occupations, their
lands and their common resources. Indebted farmers and artisans
are committing suicides in Andhra Pradesh and Maharastra. The
acute famine conditions that plagued Kalahandi in Orissa are
still vivid in our minds. Has there been an attempt to analyse
the factors that lie behind and find out lasting solutions?
Neither the Plans nor the budgets consider providing adequate
safety nets for those that are affected in this process.
Despite five
decades of efforts, problems persist in the provision of basic
amenities. Some bare facts like, 44% Households in rural areas
do not have safe drinking water; 15% Habitation gets less than
10 liters per day; 1.77 Lakh habitations are problem villages;
More than a third of Hand pumps are Defunct Electricity; 69%
Households do not have electric connection and 91 % Householders
do not have toilets.
An interesting
development brought out by the data relating to allocations to
the social sector, particularly education and health, is that
though the states and union territories have a major share in
these sectors, they have registered smaller increases relative
to the increase in central government particularly, in respect
of current expenditure. This suggests that the Central
government is increasingly intervening into the day-to-day
aspects of the social sector. This is evident particularly in
the case of education. The central assistance to the states,
however, has relatively declined during the period of the
reform, even for the sectors like welfare. The centrally
sponsored schemes under the social sector also exhibit similar
trends. Though in the case of some sub-sectors of the social
sector, the share has shown an increase, in their case, the
increase is marginal, particularly in relation to the needs of
the sub-sector.
Poverty,
unemployment, exploitation and displacement from common resource
endowment are at the core of the problem of extremist activity
that is sweeping across the many states. In the latest budget,
P Chidambaram has referred to his social sector programmes as an
‘assault’ on poverty, though the budget allocations he has made
are far too meager to permit any such decisive action. If the
defence sector could be allocated resources amounting to 2.4 per
cent of GDP, would not the social sectors with all these
ramifications deserve that much of attention, if not more? Of
course, defence purchases are a big business and they stand on a
different footing, in the perception of our political
leadership. If external threat is bad, internal social tensions
can be worse, as they tend to tear at the very fabric of the
society and disrupt the façade of democracy in the country.
Since,
independence, certain institutional changes have been taking
place as the unintended consequences of policy measures and
developmental programmes. The fundamental lesson of the Indian
experience of the past five decades can be stated very plainly:
if planning is not used to share the institutional structure of
the economy, that structure will come to shape the entire
planning process and the nation’s economic policies in general.
June
2007
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