Sarva Shikshya Abhiyaan: a success?????

According to a latest report by CAG over the implementation of Sarva Shikshya Abhiyaan (Midday Meal Scheme), the funds meant for the scheme were grossly siphoned off by the officials in charge for their personal benefits. CAG found that even petty officials owned large expensive imported cars like Skoda, grossly above what their compensation permits. Despite a consistent large annual increase in fund allocation for the scheme since its inception, the quality of food given out to students has only deteriorated. Students in various schools throughout the country have often complained of falling sick after consuming the low quality food given out under the scheme. Apart from being another incidence of taxpayers hard earned money being siphoned off by corrupt government officials, the incident brings to the forefront the apathy of our politicians towards bringing efficiency in the system. All political parties have been unanimous in consistently demanding more funds for the scheme, resulting in increased burden on taxpayers. Our super-intelligent politicians fail to understand that a more efficient Public Distribution System (PDS) will itself take care of the increased scheme requirements without mandating any increase in funds allocation in the short term. Only once the required efficiency creeps into the system, increased funds should be allocated. The only purpose the increased allocation has served is to enrich our loyal bureaucrats beyond what they already are. Increased allocation is a better populist measure and will generate more publicity for our dearest politicians than what increased efficiency can ever do for them.

Rajiv Gandhi once famously quoted that out of every 1 rupee allocated; only about 17 paisa reaches the eventual beneficiary. Today the condition is even worse. Corruption has already become a part of our culture. It’s high time our government does something about this menace before it becomes incurable. Involving private sector in public schemes is one of the methods that promise increased accountability and enhanced efficiency from our hard working bureaucrats. Infosys has been associated with the scheme in some districts in the state of Karnataka both as a logistics provider and a large sponsor of the scheme. In these districts the scheme has been a great success. The people concerned have been able to provide good quality food to school children while keeping costs extremely low even lower than the districts where the scheme has been a large failure on account of huge costs involved. This shows that effective leadership is the foremost criteria for making any scheme a success and our politicians have to show the way here to our bureaucrats. This year government fund allocation for the scheme went up from INR 7324 crores last year to INR 8000 crores this year. It was one of the few bills that found support from political parties across the board, without the efficiency of funds utilization being questioned. It’s high time our government and other politicians move up from mere populist measures to achieving efficient governance. I hope our politicians take a note of this.