Left bastion lags behind other states in SSA

While the UPA government's flagship programme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) is making good progress in other parts of the country, the Communist-led West Bengal is lagging behind with 8.97 lakh children still out of the school system in the state.

The state of affairs appears to be the same in other welfare programmes like Targeted Public Distribution System and Antyodaya Anna Yojana.

The report of Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the year ending March 2006 states that the SSA failed to create the desired impact as the state perspective and annual plans were prepared without conducting any survey of households or children.

"The plans did not reflect the true picture of the state," the report observes pointing to the flouting of the norms in the state.

The report also slams the West Bengal government for not able to arrest the dropout rate in the schools. As of April 2005, the overall dropout rate for Class I to IV was 76 per cent, whereas for classes V to VIII, it was 51 per cent.

The reasons for the poor show are also made evident. While the pupil to teacher ratio envisaged under SSA is 40:1, the state has it in excess with 49:1 for the primary and 55:1 for the upper primary levels. Vacant posts of teachers were not filled and appointment of additional teachers was not done to improve the situation, the report observed.

The SSA visualises an effective partnership with the local communities in achieving universlisation of education. But in West Bengal, 9 per cent of the villages have no Village Education Committees in place. For villages which have them in place, 47 per cent of the VECs are not trained in the sensitization and orientation programmes.

The provision of physical infrastructure in the state has failed to meet the targets. Out of the 50,255 primary schools in the state, 20 per cent of the schools had only one classroom, whereas under SSA every primary school should have at least two rooms. As many as 40 per cent of these schools do not have a toilet facility.

Even on the financial side, the performance of the state appears dismal. The report says that the West Bengal government, through the Paschim Bengal Rajya Prarambhik Siksha Unnayan Sansthan, the nodal agency for SSA implementation in the state, was not able to procure the Rs 522.48 crore in the form of grants from the central government because of non-utilisation of funds.

When the total projected outlay for the state was Rs 1685.31 crore from 2001-05, CAG observes, only Rs 789.33 crore (47 per cent) was spent on the government's flagship programme in the state.

Even the programmes like the Targeted Public Distribution System and Antyodaya Anna Yojana meant to provide food grains to the Below Poverty Line families have failed to reach the "targeted" in West Bengal, CAG reported.

The Food and Supplies Department could achieve only 49 per cent of the target procurement of rice for the BPL population during 2001-06, mainly due to the delay in releasing funds to the procurement agencies, the report said. As much as 68 per cent of the total allocation of the food grains was not lifted by the West Bengal government for distribution through the fair price shops during the same period.

At the same time, the state government was not able to claim the central subsidy of Rs 64.66 crore due to the non-preparation of TPDS proforma accounts.