NDA scheme facing ‘political’ roadblocks

New Delhi: The NDA government’s ambitious scheme of transforming 115 backward districts into “aspirational” ones, which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had unveiled on January 5 this year, seems to be facing implementational issues owing to the absence of a proper budgetary allocation. There does not seem to be clarity on its funding pattern.

In addition to this, the scheme also seems to be facing a “political” roadblock as Left-ruled Kerala, TMC-led West Bengal, and BJD-ruled Odisha — whose 13 districts had been identified under the scheme — have refused to be part of the initiative, thus leaving the Centre with only 102 districts to transform.

The Centre had identified seven districts from Odisha, five from West Bengal, and one from Kerala under the project. However, from its very inception, these states had refused to participate in the scheme.

While presenting the Union Budget for 2018-19, finance minister Arun Jaitley had made a passing reference in his speech about the scheme. He said that the government has identified 115 aspirational districts, taking various indices of development in consideration and that these are expected to become models of development.

However, no financial allocation was made for the scheme under the Budget. Initially, during the planning stage of the scheme, there were high level deliberations within the government on wheth-er it should be announced in the Budget. When the PM unveiled it on January 5, there were expectations that a substantial amount could be announced for it in the Budget.

Sources privy to the development project said that with no proper funding in place for the scheme, the Niti Aayog — which was the key initiator of the ambitious venture — seems to be exploring the public-private partnership (PPP) or the corporate social responsibility (CSR) route to get the scheme on track.

This became clear when last week, the Niti Aayog and Piramal Foundation entered into a statement of intent (SoI) to work closely with the district collectors and key officers of the “aspirational districts” to support their transformation in terms of healthcare, education, and nutrition.

In fact, Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, after signing the pact with Piramal Foundation, highlighted the fact that the PPP aided by technology can bring radical transformation in the country, thus boosting implementation of various government schemes.

On the other hand, lack of participation by three key states like West Ben-gal, Kerala, and Odisha — all of which are ruled by BJP’s political opponents — also seems to have hamstrung the Centre’s plan of smooth implementation of the scheme.

Top sources said that despite consultations with chief ministers of these states by the Niti Aayog officials, neither did they appoint any of their district magistrates as “prabhari officers” for the scheme, nor did they seem convinced with the criterion of the selection of ‘backward’ districts for transforming them under the scheme.

This newspaper had exclusively reported on November 6, 2017, about this project. It was said that a national dashboard would be set up for these 115 backward districts. It would be a database with numerical details of five major development para-meters of these districts such as health, education and sanitation.