By Patricia Mukhim
Meghalaya must be the first state in the country where the Chief Minister himself presented a pre-budget kaleidoscope to an online and offline audience invited to the Secretariat. The CM was assisted by Commissioner and Secretary Finance, Dr Vijay Kumar. Both are wizards at finances and know the story behind each of the figures they presented. One interesting facet about Dr Vijay Kumar’s academic journey is his PhD in Economics and Public Policy from Oxford University. His study includes the Economics of Education where he evaluated the impact of India’s national school choice policy on children’s outcomes and investigated related questions central to the theoretical and empirical debates on school choice in developing countries.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma got his degree in business administration in entrepreneurial management from the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania and later completed his MBA in Finance from Imperial College London. There couldn’t have been a better combo to deal with the nitty gritty of the state’s finances. However, since Conrad Sangma is a Financial Management person he is essentially trained to plan, organize, direct and control the financial activities of the corporate world which includes procurement and utilization of funds of the enterprise. In short it means applying general management principles to financial resources of the enterprise. Unfortunately, running an enterprise is entirely different from running a state. In an enterprise you have the luxury of employing the best minds but a state is a mix of the best and the worst; the most intelligent and the ignoramus. Often, it’s the ignoramuses that call the shots without any evidence to back their demands. This is the toughest part about politics. A business is much easier to run because at the end of the day an enterprise is measured by the profits it manages to yield. In a state the outcomes are measured by human development.
Dr Vijay Kumar is a development economist and assists the Chief Minister with making a budget to cater to a very diverse population comprising the affluent (high level) and the poorest of the poor – the 37% of Meghalaya’s population living below poverty line. What sort of budget would pull them out of the quagmire of poverty? Do we have any scholar who has done intensive and extensive research on poverty and why some people are just not able to make it through the dark night of the soul? What is missing in their lives which condemns them to that gruelling life of never being able to send their kids to school and even to manage two square meals a day? And this in a supposedly egalitarian tribal society where clans are supposed to not abandon their kin.
Since Dr Vijay Kumar has specialised on school choice policy, one wishes he was given more scope to take a close look at the educational system in Meghalaya and why there are schools with zero enrolment but are still allowed to continue to feature in the government’s books of accounts and teachers receive their salaries. Firstly, our schools sort children according to their ability to do well on standardized tests while slighting the innate wisdom held in the body which is just as important for navigating life. Also, our economic models seem to be inherently faulty because they are based on the idea that humans are rational creatures, who coolly calculate their self- interest. But nothing can be further from the truth. The Rs 5000 given to farmers in 2023 December under the Farmers’ Collectivization for Upscaling Production and Marketing Systems (FOCUS) was intended to support farmer producer groups through funding for value chain development, machinery support, market linkages, transportation, and aggregation of produce.
“The desired outcome of FOCUS was
that the groups would work in tandem and put the Rs 5000 in a corpus for pursuing the
collective goals mentioned above. But not
all farmers used that money the way it was intended. Many purchased consumables
because farmers in Meghalaya are essentially poor. Hence devising schemes that suffer at the implementation stage is a bad idea.”
The desired outcome of FOCUS was that the groups would work in tandem and put the Rs 5000 in a corpus for pursuing the collective goals mentioned above. But not all farmers used that money the way it was intended. Many purchased consumables because farmers in Meghalaya are essentially poor. Hence devising schemes that suffer at the implementation stage is a bad idea. Besides, we have so little follow up study on whether the scheme was truly successful and empowered the farmers. Government somehow is unwilling to spend long enough time to monitor the implementation of a particular scheme and to do a course correction if for some reason the schemes lacked conceptual clarity.
A government that is sincere in its intent to financially empower its citizens by devising multifarious schemes should also not shy away from conducting field-based studies to monitor the schemes step by step and measure outcomes. It’s not easy to take a particular scheme to the people and expect all the stakeholders to understand what their contribution and participation should be.
It is an admitted fact that CM Conrad Sangma is heavily invested in the budget making exercise and even knows exactly which number slide in the presentation pertains to questions asked by the participants in the open session on February 12. He answered questions that came on the chatbox on Facebook live. Dr Vijay Kumar ably assisted him when he floundered. That sort of camaraderie is rare between a minister and a bureaucrat.
What was positive about the exercise was also the patience with which both Conrad Sangma and Dr Vijay Kumar listened to the participants, answered their queries and also took note of their suggestions, particularly the suggestions pertaining to single women-headed households and other issues related to problems faced by women as highlighted by Kong Theilin Phanbuh. Former Chairperson of the State Women’s Commission. There were strong advocates for farmers’ welfare and the CM seemed to have taken note of their grievances.
Having made my observations about the pre-budget presentation, I feel there was an unnecessary hurry to explain away a number of queries raised by professors from the Economics Department of NEHU. Questions were raised about the SASCI scheme which stands for Scheme for Special Assistance to States for Capital Investment. This is a Government of India initiative to provide financial assistance to state governments in the form of interest free loans for capital investment projects such as for developing iconic tourist centres across the country. This is a 50-year interest free loan from the central government. What was also pointed out was the revenue leakage especially in excise and minerals. The budget shows zero revenue accrual from minerals since coal mining was banned but what about limestone and boulders to the tune of 300-400 trucks per day going to Bangladesh? The CM said that aspect would be looked into.
What is perhaps a matter that is often overlooked is the attempt by the MDA Government to empower women vide the Self Help Group (SHG) mode. Between 2018-2024 there has been a 5-fold increase in SHGs. From 10,706 SHGs in 2018 to 49,406 in 2024 which include gender and health activists. For 5400 voluntary organisations an amount of Rs 1000 crore has been invested. What’s also interesting is that there is 50% reservation for women in Village Employment Councils for implementation of the MNREGA.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma did admit though that tackling the problems besieging the educational sector is the most difficult challenge. Add to that is the persistent problem that all governments in Meghalaya face which is that all projects exceed the timeline thereby leading to time and cost overruns. Whether this is intentionally done by the project implementers (State PWD Department) to enable contractors to demand escalation costs needs to be investigated.
The Chief Minister has stated upfront that citizens’ grievances would be addressed upfront especially when he holds the CM Connect programme across the state. This is where people have to be empowered to speak up and list out their grievances because it has to be admitted that the weakest link in the chain is the administrative hierarchy. Unless the delivery system is strengthened and there is a strict monitoring system in place, last end implementation of schemes will always be a problem. The Meghalaya Government has to put in place a robust monitoring and evaluation system using its consultants.