NEW DELHI: Days before Union Minister of Finance Arun Jaitley spells out what may be the Narendra Modi administration’s last Union Budget before general elections, the Prime Minister’s brains trust has asked that more funds be allocated for education and health.
The NITI Aayog has suggested that the current term’s final budget must spend generously on the social sector.
In a detailed study on the impact of the implementation of the 14th Finance Commission report and of Central schemes, the NITI Aayog has noted that Manipur, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have experienced negative growth in social sector expenditure as a percentage of gross state domestic product (GSDP). Since then the states have got higher allocation from New Delhi as compensation for Central schemes that were either scrapped or downsized.
The report further stated that social expenditure in Kerala, Odisha and West Bengal has also dipped. However, the report, a copy of which is with The Sunday Standard, noted that except for Bihar, all major states registered -0.39 per cent to 0.82 per cent increase in social sector spending. In the case of West Bengal, social sector spending dipped by 0.39 per cent in 2015-16. Only Bihar recorded an increase of over a per cent.
The impact of the 14th Finance Commission report implementation on social sector expenditure in the North-eastern and Himalayan states also had a similar pattern. Overall expenditure on health and education as percentage of GSDP witnessed a meagre growth of 0.19 per cent for all major states put together. In the Northeast it was 1.05 per cent.
The report noted that “in case of Tamil Nadu, the increase in total Central transfer has been only around 10 per cent which can be cited as a probable reason for decline in allocation to social sector as percentage of the GSDP (-0.17 per cent growth).”
The report has assumed on the basis of analysis that “it may be a concern of the stakeholders that in future state(s) may allocate their untied resources to other sector(s) despite their relatively poor social indicator(s)”. But it hoped that “such a scenario is unlikely to occur believing that state governments being the elected representatives are equally responsible to take care of this.”