Into the heartlands of India with more money in the bag

The UPA government's commitment to focus on "real" India is bearing fruit "" at least in the Budget.

This year allocations for Bharat Nirman, which, according to the Finance Minister P Chidambaram, epitomises the UPA's governance, have gone up by a substantial percentage of 54 per cent "" from Rs 12,160 crore provided in 2005-06 to Rs 18, 696 crore in 2006-07.

The Bharat Nirman scheme has six components: rural housing, drinking water, rural telephony, rural roads, irrigation and rural electrification. These come under three different ministries, mainly the Ministry of Rural Development, Telcommunciations, and Water Resources.

For rural housing, the outlay this year is Rs 2,625 crore, an increase from the Rs 2,492 crore that had been laid aside last year for rural housing. In physical terms, around 8,70,000 rural habitations have come up till January 2006 under the programme.

The outlay for rural connectivity through roads under Bharat Nirman is mainly through the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY). The outlay for 2006-07 is Rs 4,853 crore, Rs 1,000 crore more than 2005-06, when the outlay was Rs 3,809.5 crore. In numerical terms, 5,337 rural habitations have been connected in 2005-06 under the scheme.

Every year, 5 per cent of the total revenue of all telecom operators is collected in a non-lapsable fund called the Universal Service Obligation Fund, which can be used only for rural telephony. This year Rs 1,500 crore from this fund has been earmarked for Bharat Nirman.

The Accelerated Rural Water Supply Project (ARWSP), which falls under the rural development ministry, has been brought under the general umbrella of the Bharat Nirman Programme. The outlay for ARWSP for 2006-07 is Rs 3,065, which is up by nearly Rs 800 crore from 2005-06, when the outlay was Rs 2,259 crore.

The Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme is the scheme through which maximum arable land is brought under irrigation. The outlay for the scheme in 2006-07 is Rs 3,653 crore. The physical target that this scheme will aim at this year will be to release the irrigation potential of 6,00,000 hecatres of land.

Finally, rural electrification under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran programme ,which has led to the electrification of 10,366 villages in the current fiscal, is slated to get Rs 3,000 crore in 2006-07. This is a big jump from the Rs 1,100 crore that was allotted to the programme in 2005-06.

The criticism of the government for simply repackaging old schemes into Bharat Nirman following the last Budget seems to have been taken to heart by the Finance Ministry since outlays for all components in the scheme have been increased.

It's also the big ticket the Budget has used to ensure that the Left has less to cry foul about when it comes to dispersal of monies on engaging with schemes for developing rural India.