EDITORIALS

The Problem with ‘Targeting’

In its zeal to achieve numerical goals, the government is jeopardising the efficacy of welfare schemes.

W
hen targets for social welfare schemes become more was instrumental in implementing a forced sterilisation pro-
important than actual outcomes, warm human beings gramme. This one programme contributed to the unpopularity
become cold statistics. During the Emergency, Sanjay of the Indira regime and her eventual electoral defeat in March
Gandhi, the younger son of former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, 1977. More importantly, the overall healthcare programme of
8 september 17, 2016 vol lI no 38 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the government was wrongly equated with nasbandi, thereby
damaging it considerably. In 1994, the government abandoned
the concept of setting targets in family welfare initiatives after
it made an international commitment at the United Nations
Conference on Population and Development. Has the Narendra
Modi government failed to learn lessons from the experience
of previous governments in its zeal to meet targets for various
welfare schemes, including the ones aimed at achieving financial
inclusion (Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana), improved sanitation
(Swachh Bharat) and providing electricity to all villages (Deen
Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana)?
A detailed investigation by the Indian Express, based on infor-
mation obtained under the Right to Information Act together with
interviews conducted with 52 individuals living in 25 villages and
four cities across six states, has arrived at conclusions that should
make the authorities sit up and think twice about the way targets
are being met. After the financial inclusion scheme—essentially
a repackaging of existing programmes—was announced by the
Prime Minister on 15 August 2014 with much fanfare, nationalised
banks went on an overdrive to open new accounts. Thereafter,
when it was pointed out that the mere opening of “zero balance”
accounts would achieve little, bank officials decided to pursue a
devious strategy to meet targets. They started illegally seeding a
single rupee into a zero balance account to change its nomencla-
ture. Until two years ago, at least two out of five Indian families
did not have a member with a bank account. This proportion has
since improved. However, opening a bank account is just the first
step towards financial inclusion and bringing the poor within the
ambit of the organised financial sector. If there is such gross mani-
pulation of data at this very first stage, claims about “empowering”
the poor by ensuring direct cash transfers to the accounts of
beneficiaries of welfare programmes have to be questioned.
Much has been written about the target-oriented approach in
the Swachh Bharat programme but there is little to indicate that
the mindset of ruling party politicians and bureaucrats has
changed significantly. Having imposed a cess from November 2015,
construction of toilets has been accelerated. Government data
indicates that nearly 1.6 crore toilets were built in rural areas in
two years and that 9.5 crore more need to be constructed in
three years if the target to make the country open-defecation
Economic & Political Weekly EPW september 17, 2016 vol lI no 38
EDITORIALS
free is to be achieved by 2019. Four out of the five states that have
built the maximum number of toilets are Bharatiya Janata Party
(BJP) governments, namely, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maha-
rashtra and Chhattisgarh. There are enough indications that mere
construction of toilets is hardly successful in achieving the bigger
social goals of ensuring better sanitation and human waste
disposal. A report of the National Sample Survey Office found
that over 57% of the rural households and 22% of the urban
households surveyed in May–June 2015 did not have access to
water in their toilets. In Chhattisgarh, which has been ruled
by the BJP for nearly 13 years, there are reports of sarpanches
wanting to commit suicide because they are unable to repay
loans that were taken to meet targets of toilet construction.
In the same state in November 2014, 15 women died because
of botched sterilisation operations; 70 more were hospitalised.
A doctor and his assistant had performed tubectomy operations
on over 130 women in two days. He was then lauded by the
Chhattisgarh government for his “achievement.” After he was
arrested and suspended by Chief Minister Raman Singh, he
alleged that he had been under pressure to meet targets.
The story repeats itself with rural electrification. In his Inde-
pendence Day speech in 2015, Modi claimed that though Nagla
Fatela village in Hathras district, Uttar Pradesh, was just three
hours away from Delhi it had taken almost seven decades for
electricity to reach its residents. Journalists later found the claim
to be false. Government data contends that nearly all villages in
India—98.7%, to be precise—have been electrified. Yet inde-
pendent reports suggest that electricity was not being consumed
by more than one-third of the households in Indian villages.
The rural electrification policy formulated a decade ago states
that a village is considered “electrified” if a transformer and
distribution lines have been provided in an inhabited locality,
including a Dalit basti, and a tenth of the households in the
village has “access” to electricity. There is no mention as to
whether these households are actually consuming power.
This government, like the previous one, persists with the subter-
fuge of using questionable statistics to boast about its achievements.
By emphasising fulfilment of targets, the government is not only
damaging its own credibility but also undermining the processes
through which otherwise laudable welfare schemes are executed.
9