ENARADA, Bangalore
By Mathihalli Madan Mohan
The much touted constitutional amendment (Art 371 J) giving constitutional protection to the backward region of Hyderabad Karnataka areas as a panacea for development, this most backward region where 32 of the 39 assembly constituencies are regarded as backward, has been sadly belied.
The constitutional protection ensures reservations of seats in the government jobs and educational institutions for locals, which indeed is nothing short of bonanza. But it does not ensure flow of additional Central funds to the state government, which is the felt need of the hour, for accelerating the pace for removal of imbalance, which is the bane of the region.
The Hyderabad Karnataka Development Board, mandated with the task of ensuring “equitable allocation of funds to meet the development needs of the region from the state budget”, will be formed and this would replace the existing board with the same nomenclature. It will be headed by Governor, instead of a politician as used to be in the past. There will be significant change in its composition too, with only a hand few legislators from the region being the members instead of the entire lot from the region as it used to be in the past.
What is however significant in providing level field for development is that as usual the state government will have to bear the entire burden of meeting the expenditure? No flow of special additional funds from the Centre is envisaged, as was once thought.
That there will be no flow of Central funds has been made clear by Mr. Mallikarjun Kharge, the Union Minister for Labour and Employment, who worked behind the scene to get the constitutional protection for the area. The same has been reiterated by Mr. H K Patil the Karnataka Minister for Rural Development and Panchayat Raj in Bangalore. However Mr. Patil talked of the funds being available from the Central Government under the backward area of development. The moot point here these additional funds would be available to all backward districts, not necessarily belonging to the region. They would have been available, if there was no constitutional protection.
It is here that the catch lies. The state government in Karnataka always used to maintain that it would not be possible to take up any programme other than the normal ones for the development of the backward areas without the Central assistance. It was because of this reason; the two Congress governments headed by Mr. S M Krishna (1999-2004) and Mr. Dharam Singh (2004-2006) chose to keep the Nanjundappa Committee report on removal of regional imbalance in cold storage as it were. It was only taken up by second coalition government with Messer’s Kumaraswamy and Yeddyurappa as the Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister respectively in 2007, a full five years after the report was originally submitted.
The report it may be mentioned here had called for a total additional investment of Rs. 16,000 crores in a eight year time frame, which meant an additional allocation of Rs. 2000 crores per year. But Mr Siddaramaiah, the present Chief Minister and the then Deputy Chief Minister, handling the Finance portfolio had taken a stand then that the resource constraint was coming in the way. The very same Mr. Siddaramaiah, as the Chief Minister, has been called upon hold the baby of implementation and faces the task of earmarking a portion of budget for the development of the Hyderabad Karnataka. How will the unwilling Mr. Siddaramaih, reconcile to the new situation, his earlier reservation notwithstanding.
Karnataka has always been pleading with the Centre for special package for tackling the scourge of backwardness on the ground interalia that it has the largest track of drought affected areas. But the Centre had its reservations. It was because of this that efforts of Karnataka to get a good deal from the Centre did not bear fruit, even when Mr. Ramakrishna Hegde was the Vice Chairman of the Planning Commission.
But from the tenth plan, the Centre relented a bit to and started giving assistance to the backward districts. But it is too small amount considering the task that Karnataka faces. The state got around Rs.150 crores in all under this head. But the additional problem would be that two of the districts namely Koppal and Bellary now coming under the ambit of the Hyderabad Karnataka Development Board are not in the reckoning for assistance under the scheme, because they are considered as developed. But a move on the part of the Planning in revising the criteria laid down to determine the backwardness, offers some hope some assistance. But nothing substantial can be expected in view of the imperative necessity of allocating higher resources.
The availability of funds and its proper utilisation for combating the backwardness of the region have been the bug bears of its efforts to combat the problem from its own funds. Though it was an open secret that the Hyderabad Karnataka was the most backward region in the state, the first initiative to tackle the problem fructified only after more than three and half decades. In consonance with a special enactment made in the 1991, a Hyderabad Karnataka Development Board was constituted in 1992 exclusively for the region.
Another sixteen years had to elapse, before the state government took up a programme for the removal of regional imbalance though Special Development Programme(SDP) from the year 2007-2008. The SDP was formulated on the basis of the recommendations given five years earlier by the High Power Committee on Removal of Regional Imbalance headed by the famous economist and educationist Dr D M Nanjundappa. The canvass of the recommendation was the entire state and the committee had reckoned that 114 out of the 173 taluks including those in Hyderabad Karnataka area were backwards determined on a specially worked formula. The share of the Hyderabad Karnataka was reckoned at 40% of the allocation made as per the Cumulative Deprivation Index which had been specially worked out, since the canvass of Nanjundappa Committee was the entire state. This came as an additionality of investment for the Hyderabad Karnataka area.
The HKDB is under implementation for the past twenty-one years. The performanance has been quite tardy. The Nanjundappa Committee which got a special evaluation made has recommended the abolition of the same, since it has not served the purpose for which it was established. (Similar recommendation has been made for the other two area development boards pertaining the Malenadu and the Bayaluseeme- plains areas).
Going by the evaluation made after the first decade of its performanance, it appears that nothing has gone well with it. Firstly, the state government hardly released the full budget amount in no single year the government has been able to release the budgeted money in full and there has been serious short fall in utilisation. During the first ten years, a total of Rs. 693 crore was the budget allocation, of which Rs, 569 crores was released. And only Rest. 318 cores was utilized. And the story for the next decade is nothing different with the gradual reduction of allocation, release and the utilisation.
It had no data base of it’s for preparing the action/annual plans and the proposal sent by the MLAs was the entire data base which was relied upon. The amount after meeting the demands of the MLAs was arbitrarily spent, Bulk of the works was spent on roads and bridges and the social sector received hardly any priority. There was hardly any monitoring done of the works undertaken, and quality of works remained far from satisfactory. The meetings of the committee were invariably held in Bangalore, while focus of activities was in the region. And the attendance was invariably low, with the MLAs hardly evincing any interest. The annual allocation showed a gradual decline once the implementation of the SDP got going
It has been the story of the state governments failing to release the money allocated under the SDP too. Since the recommendation of total additional investment made by the Nanjundappa Committee was based on price level of 2002-03, the price escalation was factored in, to make allocations at the current prices. As a consequence, the Hyderabad Karnataka area was to receive a total revised allocation of Rs. 3312 crores for the first three years, but the annual outlay fixed cumulatively were Rs. 2210 crores, leaving a gap of Rs. 1102 crores. There is considerable gap in the amount allocated and the amount released.
In a study undertaken by a two member team of Prof Abdul Aziz and Siddalingaswamy Hangondimath under the DM Nanjundappa Chair of the Centre for Multi Disciplinary Development Research (C M DR), an ICSSR institution, has revealed barring agricultural sector, the actual allocation in all other major sectors is not consistent with what was recommended by the Nanjundappa Committee. It has also been revealed that Gulbarga Division (covering the HKDB area) which out to have received 40%, got only 35.15% of the SDP outlay.
Under circumstances, the expeditious development of the backward region, thanks to the constitutional protection just granted, can be nothing more than a mirage, in the context of the proven inability on the part of the state government in meeting its budget commitment from its own funds and absence of any Central fund flowing in.
(Posted on October 29 , 2013 @ 10.30am)
(Author is a Senior Journalist and Columnist. Mobile: +91 94480 74872 Email : madan.mm@gmail.com)
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