The Hindu : Government running behind schedule

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Feb 17, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Government running behind schedule

By Sujay Mehdudia

NEW DELHI, FEB. 16. Having stormed back to power on the plank of development and good governance, the Sheila Dikshit Government is finding the going tough in view of what is generally seen as lacklustre performance of the new Council of Ministers. Coupled with this, delays in completion of major infrastructure projects have put a question mark over the development-oriented agenda of the Congress Government and the competence of certain Ministers to get on with work in their departments.

Ever since the Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit, took the oath of office for the second time in December this year, she has been busy reviewing the performance of all the departments that have been lagging behind in various aspects. Ms. Dikshit has been over-burdened by having to work on behalf of some of the Ministers who are unable to administer their departments or set right the priorities. The Government is faced with a precarious situation on the financial front as the revenue collections, both excise and sales tax, are not up to the mark. The situation is no different as far as the infrastructure projects are concerned as a majority of them are running behind schedule.

As for the Council of Ministers, the performance has not been up to expectations as many of the Ministers are still trying to come to grips with the working of their Departments. In fact, among the new Ministers, it is only the Education Minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely, the Power and Transport Minister, Haroon Yusuf and the Development Minister, Raj Kumar Chauhan, who according to observers have emerged as performers.

In fact, political observers point out that the advancement of the Lok Sabha polls has had an impact on the performance as the Government has been tied down by the populist tendencies pushing back reforms and bold decisions in various sectors to the background. The budget that sets out all the priorities and policy decision of the Government is likely to be delayed due to the polls and would now be presented only sometime in May. Instead, the Government is likely to go in for a vote-on-account during March. However, this cannot be held as the reason for the lack of performance on part of the Government that is faced with shortage of para-medical staff including doctors in important hospitals. Interestingly, a recent survey done by the Health Department has pointed out that due to lack of adequate staff, the working of some of the hi-tech medical equipment has come to a standstill.

As for the infrastructure projects, nothing is on time and everything is running behind schedule. Be it the flyovers, subways or under-pass projects, each one of them is losing valuable taxpayers money. The delay in execution of the Dhaula Kuan flyover project by over two years has become a thing of the past and others are following the bad example. For instance, the Lajpat Nagar-Srinivaspuri flyover project, the Britania Chowk flyover project, the Madhuban Chowk under-pass project, the Naroji Nagar flyover project or the new hospital projects, all of them are running behind schedule without the concerned contractors being penalised.

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