The government has been undertaking welfare schemes to reduce poverty, hunger and unemployment. But the emphasis has been on the fulfilment of numerical targets, not on the way in which the targets are met. The overemphasis on targets has destroyed the efficacy of policies.

The Narendra Modi government has started the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In order to achieve the target of toilet construction set by the officials, sarpanches in some villages in Chhattisgarh took loans and promised to repay the amount once they got the sum sanctioned from the district administration. However, on being threatened by suppliers and lenders, they were forced to contemplate suicide. Incidentally, their villages were declared free of open defecation months before the construction of toilets.

Ten crore more toilets by 2019 means 10 crore more septic tanks. Who will clean these toilets in the absence of suction pumps? Manual scavengers? The Supreme Court order against manual scavenging notwithstanding, the government has failed to invest in technology that makes human intervention redundant.

This, however, is not the only instance of the matter at hand. In his Independence Day speech, the prime minister had said, “It takes only three hours to reach Nagla Fatela. But it took 70 years for electricity to reach there.” But what was the reality? It is true that the government had made arrangements for electrification of the village under the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana. But at that point of time, the village had got poles, wires and meters but power supply remained a distant dream. A village is considered electrified if a transformer and distribution lines have been provided and a tenth of the total households have access to electricity. Given the faulty method of enumeration, the government should be able to meet its target without difficulty.

After the launch of the Jan-Dhan Yojana, it was pointed out that the opening of zero-balance accounts would achieve nothing. Banks responded by playing a trick: officials surreptitiously deposited one rupee into the new accounts so as not to miss the target. Consequently, the proportion of zero-balance accounts fell from 75 per cent in September 2014 to 24.3 per cent by July 2016. The money was contributed by bank employees or from expense accounts. But has this lead to financial inclusion?

Let us take another example. With a total outlay of around 1,500 crore, the Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana was launched in 2015 to impart skill training to dropouts and youth from lower income groups. As per the information obtained through the Right to Information Act, out of 17.07 lakh students, only 82,183 managed to bag jobs since the scheme was launched. A report by Pratham corroborated the fact. The Standard Training Assessment and Reward scheme, which was started by the National Skill Development Corporation, imparted skill training to about 9.5 lakh people but kept no record of job placement. What is the use of such schemes if they do not maintain employment records? Worryingly, the allotment of courses to the programme implementing agency and training centres is done without any local survey on demand.

The State has also adopted several measures to eradicate hunger and malnutrition. These include, among others, the creation of the public distribution system, the launch of the mid-day meal initiative as well as the National Food Security Act. Yet, in 2016, India has been rated as having serious levels of hunger.

The government should shift the focus from numerical targets to the implementation of policies. Otherwise, successive dispensations would have to fight the same old problems.

Susmita Priyadarshini in ‘The Telegraph’

  development, NARENDRA MODI, Sustainable Development Goals