http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/38/editorials/problem-targeting.html
The Problem with 'Targeting' Editorials Vol. 51, Issue No. 38, 17 Sep, 2016 In its zeal to achieve numerical goals, the government is jeopardising the efficacy of welfare schemes. When targets for social welfare schemes become more important than actual outcomes, warm human beings become cold statistics. During the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi, the younger son of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was instrumental in implementing a forced sterilisation programme. This one programme contributed to the unpopularity of the Indira regime and her eventual electoral defeat in March 1977. More importantly, the overall healthcare programme of the government was wrongly equated with nasbandi, thereby damaging it considerably. In 1994, the government abandoned the concept of setting targets in family welfare initiatives after it made an international commitment at the United Nations Conference on Population and Development. Has the Narendra Modi government failed to learn lessons from the experience of previous governments in its zeal to meet targets for various welfare schemes, including the ones aimed at achieving financial inclusion (Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana), improved sanitation (Swachh Bharat) and providing electricity to all villages (Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana)? A detailed investigation by the Indian Express, based on information obtained under the Right to Information Act together with interviews conducted with 52 individuals living in 25 villages and four cities across six states, has arrived at conclusions that should make the authorities sit up and think twice about the way targets are being met. After the financial inclusion scheme—essentially a repackaging of existing programmes—was announced by the Prime Minister on 15 August 2014 with much fanfare, nationalised banks went on an overdrive to open new accounts. Thereafter, when it was pointed out that the mere opening of “zero balance” accounts would achieve little, bank officials decided to pursue a devious strategy to meet targets. They started illegally seeding a single rupee into a zero balance account to change its nomenclature. Until two years ago, at least two out of five Indian families did not have a member with a bank account. This proportion has since improved. However, opening a bank account is just the first step towards financial inclusion and bringing the poor within the ambit of the organised financial sector. If there is such gross manipulation of data at this very first stage, claims about “empowering” the poor by ensuring direct cash transfers to the accounts of beneficiaries of welfare programmes have to be questioned. Much has been written about the target-oriented approach in the Swachh Bharat programme but there is little to indicate that the mindset of ruling party politicians and bureaucrats has changed significantly. Having imposed a cess from November 2015, construction of toilets has been accelerated. Government data indicates that nearly 1.6 crore toilets were built in rural areas in two years and that 9.5 crore more need to be constructed in three years if the target to make the country open-defecation free is to be achieved by 2019. Four out of the five states that have built the maximum number of toilets are Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) governments, namely, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh. There are enough indications that mere construction of toilets is hardly successful in achieving the bigger social goals of ensuring better sanitation and human waste disposal. A report of the National Sample Survey Office found that over 57% of the rural households and 22% of the urban households surveyed in May–June 2015 did not have access to water in their toilets. In Chhattisgarh, which has been ruled by the BJP for nearly 13 years, there are reports of sarpanches wanting to commit suicide because they are unable to repay loans that were taken to meet targets of toilet construction. In the same state in November 2014, 15 women died because of botched sterilisation operations; 70 more were hospitalised. A doctor and his assistant had performed tubectomy operations on over 130 women in two days. He was then lauded by the Chhattisgarh government for his “achievement.” After he was arrested and suspended by Chief Minister Raman Singh, he alleged that he had been under pressure to meet targets. The story repeats itself with rural electrification. In his Independence Day speech in 2015, Modi claimed that though Nagla Fatela village in Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh, was just three hours away from Delhi it had taken almost seven decades for electricity to reach its residents. Journalists later found the claim to be false. Government data contends that nearly all villages in India—98.7%, to be precise—have been electrified. Yet independent reports suggest that electricity was not being consumed by more than one-third of the households in Indian villages. The rural electrification policy formulated a decade ago states that a village is considered “electrified” if a transformer and distribution lines have been provided in an inhabited locality, including a Dalit basti, and a tenth of the households in the village has “access” to electricity. There is no mention as to whether these households are actually consuming power. This government, like the previous one, persists with the subterfuge of using questionable statistics to boast about its achievements. By emphasising fulfilment of targets, the government is not only damaging its own credibility but also undermining the processes through which otherwise laudable welfare schemes are executed. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
