Economists, politicians pick holes in budget planning

BHUBANESWAR: About 7,462 patients depend on one doctor in the State compared to national average of 1,916 people, 90.9 per cent of public health centres in the State don't have required number of beds and there is shortfall of 3,296 male health workers.

These depict sorry state-of-the-affairs of the State's health sector. Instead of giving priority to the sector, the State government has made no provision of capital expenditure in 2009-10 budget estimates that puts a very negative impact on health services.

Civil society groups, economists and politicians here on Friday picked holes in planning and demanded a more people-centric budgeting at a pre-budget citizen's consultation on “Budget Declarations and Peoples Priorities in Orissa”. The budget session of the Legislative Assembly is scheduled to begin from June 22.

Responding to reports on “unhealthy” health sector, the State Finance Minister Prafulla Ghadai said the State government had knowingly not earmarked much capital expenditure for health sector since heavy funds were available with National Rural Health Mission (NRHM).

However, the Finance Minister was probably unaware of the fact that NRHM, Orissa had fared miserably in spending funds being made available to it.

From 2005 to 2009, Rs. 362.27 crore was provided for health sector improvement in the State. However, under the mission the State government managed to spend only Rs. 128 crore, which was 34.88 per cent of assistance received by it. That means, more than 65 per cent of the fund was lying unspent.

Analysts say 12,262 villages in the State have no schools while 65,092 additional regular teachers are required to meet the standard. Orissa ranks 7th with respect to drop-out rate at primary level while efficiency of primary education system is at 67.3 per cent compared to national average of 87.8 per cent.

However, both primary and secondary education sector have seen negative growth except in 2008-09 during past five financial years.

Finance Minister blamed it on weak resource base of the State for low budgetary allocation for these sectors.

“We heavily depend on mineral and excise sectors to generate our own revenue. During past one decade, the State's economy has improved on account of slew of investments and strict following of administrative reforms. We have reached a stage from where we could pay salary to government employees on regular basis. Question of prioritising sectors does not arise now,” Mr. Ghadai said.

He said, “Centre sanctions funds in the form of different programmes. We are never given autonomy to do our need-based financial planning. Whatever grant is being made available to us, its pattern of usage is dictated by Centre.”

The consultation process was jointly organised by voluntary organisations CYSD, Action Aid, NCDHR and Human Development Foundation. Among others who participated in the consultation include P.K. Sahoo of CYSD, D. K. Roy of HDF, Pratap Sarangi, an independent legislator and Panchanan Kanungo, former finance minister.