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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Sonia’s scheme monitors off to uneasy start by Sanjay K Jha

Sonia’s scheme monitors off to uneasy start by Sanjay K Jha

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published Published on Oct 27, 2011   modified Modified on Oct 27, 2011

Sonia Gandhi’s ambitious plan to institutionalise political monitoring of the government’s flagship programmes in states has taken off in a tentative and haphazard manner.

Although she has appointed a separate Congress general secretary, Vilas Muttemwar, to oversee the monitoring system and asked all state party units to set up committees to study the implementation of the schemes, little has been achieved in the past 10 months. Many state units are yet to set up the infrastructure for the job.

Muttemwar, who was initially sulking as he presumed the job given to him was insignificant and lobbied for a political assignment, has now changed his mind after Sonia personally explained to him how important the responsibility was. The Congress chief insisted that political monitoring of the schemes could change the development paradigm in the country.

Sonia has been worried about the pathetic delivery mechanism and fraud in the schemes across the country and realised that appealing to party workers to monitor their implementation would fetch no results. So, she planned to set up the nationwide mechanism to institutionalise monitoring and get reports from every state on a quarterly basis. She wanted even the district and block committees to be involved in the process.

The party went about implementing her vision without preparing any concept paper or action plan and Muttemwar is now left with the crutch of personal initiative alone. When his letter to state units failed to yield anything substantive, he started calling up each state Congress president with a request to set up separate committees at the district and block levels. He has been pleading with them to hold at least one convention where the purpose of the exercise can be explained.

Muttemwar said he would like to hold such conventions in election-bound states such as Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Uttarakhand to begin with.

But Digvijaya Singh, the general secretary in charge of Uttar Pradesh, has taken keen interest and asked the state unit to prepare for such a convention.

There is a general impression of rot in central schemes in the state, with rural development minister Jairam Ramesh recently demanding a CBI probe into alleged frauds in rural job scheme NREGA.

But Congress leaders such as Digvijaya believe a proper assessment based on statistics will help the party corner Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati better.

Many senior leaders also believe the monitoring plan will engage party workers in a constructive effort and keep them from spending their time on lobbying, dissension, personal positioning and conspiracies. If even a section of party workers is engaged in the exercise, gathering data and sending regular reports to the central leadership, it can help check fraud in the programmes and provide political ammunition to the party.

Some NGOs do carry out social audit — evaluating their implementation — of the schemes but they neither have a nationwide network nor inside information, like the political worker.

The Congress has laid great store by schemes like the NREGA, National Rural Health Mission, Bharat Nirman, Urban Renewal mission and the mid-day meal in schools. The proposed Food Security Act is on the anvil.


The Telegraph, 27 October, 2011, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1111027/jsp/frontpage/story_14673068.jsp


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