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Bengal for `right techniques' to implement Plan schemes

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Sep. 1

THE West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has said that achieving the target of an annual rate of growth of 8 per cent during the Tenth Plan would depend on ``a right choice of techniques and cost-effective methods in the implementation of Plan schemes''.

In his address to the National Development C here on Saturday, the West Bengal Chief Minister took the Centre to task on several crucial issues that have a bearing on the evolution of sustainable economic growth to address the problems of poverty and une mployment in the country.

While the public expenditure on capital formation and social sectors are being substantially squeezed in the post- liberalisation period, the twin major suggestions for resource mobilisation such as disinvestment and thrust on improving the efficiency t o bring the incremental capital output ratio down would call for reckless resort to privatisation and change of labour laws to the detriment of workers.

He said the management of profit-making public enterprises was being handed over to the private sector at throwaway prices, thereby losing access to dividend and profits from some cash-rich PSUs.

The Government of West Bengal was of the firm view that rapid agricultural growth and all-round development of the rural sector would depend on the implementation of land reforms, followed by an effective system of decentralisation of power through the p anchayati raj which the approach paper neglects.

On the loan burden of States, which the paper refers, Mr Bhattacharjee said that most of the burden was created by the Central Government as 70 per cent of the Central Plan assistance was in the form of loans. Most of the Central schemes such as Rural In frastructure Development Fund, Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme are either totally loan-based or have a marked loan component.

It was unfortunate that without analysing the fiscal problems of the State, there was a proposal in the approach paper to even withhold a part of the Central Plan assistance unless the States follow the pattern of economic reforms similar to what is bein g dictated by IMF-WTO conditions.

In his remarks, the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr N. Chandrababu Naidu, said that the Plan panel has frozen the population level for devolution of funds under normal Central assistance with respect to 1971 census as the base year.

A similar freezing is called for devolution of funds under various anti-poverty programme should also be taken into account and better performing States should be given certain special spurs as is being done under the Mukherjee formula for devolution of Central assistance. He also pleaded for allocation of special category status to such areas in all States instead of including States as a whole under this.

The Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Mr Rajnath Singh, drew attention to the fact that as many as 31 per cent people in Uttar Pradesh are living below poverty line against the national average of 26.10 per cent. The per capita income in the State in 1950-51 was only three per cent lower than the national average, while in 1999-2000 it is lower by 38 per cent of the national average, he added.