BJP walks a tightrope in Uttarakhand
Promise of 24x7 power looks doable. Others, such as road connectivity to every village and free education, seem challenging because of financial constraints
Going into the Uttarakhand state elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party manifesto made a bunch of promises. From road connectivity to all villages by 2019 and round-the-clock power supply to filling all government vacancies in the first six months of coming to power. A closer look at some of these suggests that while a few are doable, others might prove difficult to fulfil. ISHANBAKSHI & SAHIL MAKKAR write
Going into the Uttarakhand state elections, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) manifesto made a bunch of promises. From road connectivity to all villages by 2019 and round-the-clock power supply to filling all government vacancies in the first six months of coming to power.
A closer look at some of these main promises suggests that while some are doable, others might prove difficult to fulfil.
Take rural roads, for instance. The BJP has promised constructing one to every village by 2019. Going by past record, a daunting task. In 201617, against a sanctioned road length of 1,664 km in the state under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), only 47 km has been completed. Since 2001, against a total road length sanctioned of 8,096 km, only 5,838 km has been built. According to data put out by the rural works department of the state, of the 91.9 km sanctioned in April 2015, only 4.1 km was completed; another 19.3 km was under construction.
“Constructing roads in hilly areas is difficult. Permission is sought from the forest department for land clearance and then the rocks are cut. The other challenge is the monsoon and winters, which leave only four months time for construction work,” says Shailesh Bagoli, officer in-charge of rural roads.
He says a village is considered connected to a road under PMGSY scheme, if its aerial distance from the nearest road is around 1.5 km. The state government had decided two years earlier to also construct the remaining 1.5 km of road. Under this project, around 150 km was to be built in two years; progress, as seen, has been slow.
In contrast, the promise of round-the-clock power supply appears easier. The first step entails connecting all households to the power grid. Data from the Union power ministry show of the 1.72 million rural households here, 1.5 million have electricity. In this aspect, Uttarakhand is better placed than most other states. Electrifying the remaining households is easier to achieve than in, say, Uttar Pradesh.
On power distribution, too, central to achieving the Centre’s promise of 24x7 power, Uttarakhand is better placed than other states. The state has joined the Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana (UDAY) scheme for reforming state distribution companies’ (discoms) finances. Unlike the others, it has not taken over any debt of its discoms, as they are in a better financial position, says a study by CARE Ratings.
On the contentious issue of power pricing, too, it fares better than most. Data compiled by CARE show in Uttarakhand the difference between average cost of supply and the average revenue realised per unit, a measure of how adequate power rates are to cover costs, is 27 paise a unit. The national average is 59 paise a unit. Uttarakhand ranks fifth on the 16-state list on the parameter in the CARE study.
However, the new government has much work to do on bringing down aggregate technical and commercial losses. The state has one of the highest of such losses, at 29.3 per cent. Under UDAY, these are to be brought down to 15 per cent by 2019. A 14-percentage point decline in two years will be challenging, to say the least.
Another BJP poll promise was to provide free education up to the postgraduate level for economically weaker sections. The state’s expenditure on education — as a percentage of aggregate spending — has consistently fallen over seven years, from 23.5 per cent in 2010-11 to 17.1 per cent (Budget Estimates) in 2016-17.
So, the scope to raise spending on this does exist but would be a financial problem, when seen in conjunction with the promise to fill all government vacancies in the first six months.
In 2015-16, the state spent ~9,900 crore on wages and salaries, roughly 30 per cent of its total expenditure. And, more than its entire capital expenditure, ~6,954 crore. Any increase in the pay bill means a higher fiscal burden. Its fiscal deficit already exceeds the three per cent limit prescribed by the 14th Finance Commission. In 2016-17, the deficit was budgeted at 3.4 per cent of the gross state domestic product, up from three per cent in 2015-16 (Revised Estimates). If the new government does decide to fill all vacancies, the wage bill would take resources that could be spent on education. Series concludes