Dinesh Kamath's Editorial "The story never ends' that was published in Newsband

The story never ends

The Central Government should find a perfect method to determine the backwardness of States for the purpose of deciding how much each State should receive as its share of Central funds. There should be a more rational way of determining backwardness.

Someone has proposed a method of determining backwardness by finding out a state’s backwardness with the help of 10 equally-weighted indicators such as monthly per capita expenditure, education, health, poverty rate, female literacy, percentage of SC/ST population and so on.

As per this index, the most developed States are Goa, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Maharashtra, Uttarakhand and Haryana. The least developed, or most backward, States are Odisha, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan. In between the most developed and the least developed is the middling category where Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Gujarat are placed.

So far, the Central assistance to State plans has been disbursed according to the highest weightage to population and poverty ratio. Implementing of the new proposed formula will require a lot of political will.

The thing is giving extra money to least developed states will act like an incentive to stay least developed. What the government should do is penalize these least developed states. Until and unless these states show some development, money should not be given.

The index of backwardness is much needed if India is to develop uniformly and inter-State and regional disparities have to be avoided. These disparities have various socio-economic consequences which India cannot afford to overlook.

Backward states are caught up in vicious cycle due to lack of infrastructure and human development. In such a situation, it is the duty of the Union to ensure that all States and regions within States have the opportunity to develop uniformly.

Also this funding by Centre could serve as a tool for ministers from "less developed" states to siphon off more money. Perhaps a performance factor should be included, wherein the funding for each year is based on performance in the previous years. A qualitative measurement of performance may be required since some schemes take time to take effect or the benefits may not be quantifiable.

For years the so called backward states have been poorly governed resulting in underachievement on the developmental indices. There is a case for the Centre to dictate the development policies, address transparency and accountability issues, ensure good governance before any increased allocations are thrust on the so called backward states. This in itself will be a tall order.

The states that were poor 67 years ago continue to remain so. Even 67 years after independence 67% of the populations need subsidised food to survive,

While backward states definitely do need more assistance, the so called 'developed' states should also receive funds commensurate to their needs in areas where they are performing badly.

It is strange that some states only have emerged developed and others not while all have been receiving funds. All their claims now are only a vote bank politics and they misuse the funds in the name of development and this results in a bigger scam which they get tried after a couple of decades by which time they would have groomed their sons and daughters to continue their legacy and the story never ends.