'Central schemes need proper evaluation'

Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia today lamented that most of the current government programmes lacked a proper evaluation mechanism.

“We need to assess the impact of government programmes in a more accurate manner and cannot just say that over a period of time the programme has changed lives, for which we need better evaluation,” Ahluwalia said here during his address at the National Statistics Day. “Just saying that a particular programme has changed lives does not serve the purpose; instead, we need a better evaluation of the programmes, which can be done by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation,” he added.

The central government has allocated more than Rs 1 lakh crore in five flagship programmes, including the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and the National Rural Health Mission, according to the 2011-12 Budget estimates.

“The idea should be to understand that what the factors are responsible for the change, and to what extent it (the said programme) has affected human lives,” the deputy chairman said.

Giving the example of the Integrated Child Development Services scheme, which aims to reduce malnutrition in the country, Ahluwalia said it needed to be understood in a very holistic manner as to what had been the actual benefits of the scheme (it needed a holistic understanding of what had been the actual benefits of the scheme).

He also questioned the basis for poverty estimates in the country, saying that two data sets framed by two different government agencies posed a grave challenge to the end user.

“The growth rate of personal consumption level as per the National Sample Survey Organisation estimate is lower than that shown by the national accounts. This divergence, which was around 20 per cent between the two estimates in 1980, has now risen to almost 54 per cent. This leaves estimates of poverty open to interpretation,” Ahluwalia said.

He said though the Planning Commission used the NSSO estimate of personal consumption to calculate poverty which showed it was going down, but the divergence was perplexing.

“In most countries, this divergence between personal consumption is not more than 20 per cent, but in India this is more than 50 per cent and has grown over the years,” the deputy chairman said.

He said though some experts said personal consumption on the basis of NSSO showed a decline, as the upper strata of the society was not included, it was difficult to believe that 100 per cent of the divergence between the personal consumption level shown by the two data was because of non-inclusion of higher strata of society. “This becomes critical as all things depend on how much poverty is there,” Ahluwalia added.

Earlier, addressing the seminar, Statistics and Programme Implementation Minister M S Gill expressed his disappointment over the problems in recruitment, retention and placement of cadres in the statistics department.

He said many times a Tamil person who has little knowledge of the local language of the place he is visiting, is sent to a village in Punjab to collect statistical information, which makes it difficult to get correct information.

“This should be addressed at the earliest and the government should allocate more funds for improving statistical information in the country,” Gill said.

He said statistical agencies in the country, therefore, had to inspire confidence, by maximising the quality of data being produced by the statistical system. Also, conscious efforts should be made to present statistical data, with as much clarity as possible, to minimise the chances of misinterpretation.