Bengal’s hits & misses in central flagship schemes

One of the most common complaints against the incumbent government in West Bengal (WB) is that it has shown the door to two flagship schemes of the central government. The Mamata Banerjee-led All India Trinamool Congress government has not brought the state on board the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi Yojana or the Ayushman Bharat.

This has deprived almost 8 million farmers and a significant number of poor of additional benefits, even though they continue to get benefits from the state government schemes.

If we look at WB’S performance in wholly centrally funded schemes and centrally sponsored schemes (where the Centre and states spend in a predefined ratio), we find the state’s performance has been mixed.

For example, when it comes to central schemes like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, WB has been a top performer in 2020-21 (FY21) — at a time when Covid-19 had rendered millions jobless.

The state provided work to 11.8 million people in FY21 — the highest in the country — and was among the top states in spending money under the scheme in FY21.

But its performance in distribution of free foodgrain during lockdown to the poor had been meagre and just 59 per cent of the additional allocated grain distributed between April and June, data till June 30, 2020 showed.

Similarly, the data also shows that when it comes to the flagship scheme of providing cooking gas connections to households using firewood and chips, WB has done better than the national average.

WB got 8.8 million liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) connections in four years from 2016 to 2020 under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY).

In fact, only Uttar Pradesh gained more connections than WB under the scheme since its inception (close to 15 million), making WB the second biggest beneficiary under PMUY.

WB’S performance was the best in the first two years of PMUY implementation.

Over 96 per cent of the households in the country have an LPG connection now, though many have shunned refilling due to rising oil prices.

Under the central government’s rural housing scheme Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, WB got close to 15 per cent of the houses built at the national level.

This is higher than the 7 per cent share the state occupies in the national population.

Of late, the completion rate has dwindled, not just in WB, but at the national level as well. 2019-20 (FY20) was when the Indian economy went into a protracted slowdown, affecting government revenues and crimping the spending abilities of state governments.

This could be one reason for the slow pace of this scheme in FY20.

The amount passed on to the beneficiary is transferred by the government in four instalments. The pace of transfers of subsequent instalments after the first in WB is slightly lower than the national average. The pace of connecting roads to unconnected villages also worsened in FY20. In 2018-19 (FY19), more than 5,000 kilometre (km) of rural roads were built under the centrally sponsored scheme in WB. This came down to 2,000 km in FY20.

At the pan-indian level, too, the achievement halved from close to 50,000 km in FY19 to 24,000 km in FY20.