The Finance Commission headed by former bureaucrat turned politician and senior member of the BJP, Mr NK Singh which visited Meghalaya recently has indicted the State Government on several counts. The State can ignore these observations at its peril. Meghalaya has been riding on the facade of a performing state which maintains fiscal discipline. The Finance Commission has pointed to the debt burden of the state and the loss making public sector undertakings. A prime example is the Meghalaya Electrical Power Distribution Company Ltd (MePDCL) which is a major money guzzler and requires regular funds infusion. When consumers are paying their bills regularly and the cost per unit of electricity is not subsidised it is difficult to fathom why this PSU continues to run into debts. Its payments to NEEPCo for drawing power from it during the lean months have remained unpaid. This actually speaks volumes about the mismanagement of the PSU. Time has come to disinvest such loss making PSUs instead of keeping them on life support systems perennially.
The Commission has also pointed at the poor performing health care sector where investments don’t match up with outcomes in Government run hospitals. In fact the incident at Ganesh Das Hospital on Sunday where a pregnant women needing emergency Caesarean section was not accommodated because the Hospital had run out of sterilised sheets reeks of medical irresponsibility and should actually be a case for suo- moto action by the courts.
The Commission also pointed to the low Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) which at 4.38% is lower than most other North Eastern states which are at 5.02. Clearly, Meghalaya has been hiding these financial deficits through window dressing. Now the State has been asked to come up with GSDP that runs into two figures and should touch at least 10.5%.
But the worst argument peddled by the Government to the Finance Commission is that there has been an increase in crime due to the ban on coal mining. Has the present government carried out a ground survey and conducted a qualitative and quantitative research to link crime to the ban on coal mining? What was the crime rate prior to the ban and after that? It is unbelievable that a Government would go to this extent to persuade the Centre to lift the ban on coal mining. But this is a Government that works on assumptions and is now demanding Rs 82,815 crore from the Finance Commission to meet shortfalls across departments. Does anyone even know how many zeroes there are in this figure?