Activists flay any attempt to cut funds for social sector

Leading social activists and economists today flayed any attempt to cut funds for social sector schemes like MGNREGA, saying it would affect lakhs of people and could lead to social unrest.
They claimed that there could be up to 15 per cent cut in the Revised Estimates of social sector schemes and that the amount could be to the tune of around Rs 3,000 crore in MNREGA.
The activists, who came out against any possible cut in social sector allocation, included Nikhil Dey, Prabhat Patnaik and Jayati Ghose.
"On basis of media reports coupled with my own reliable sources in the government I can confirm that cuts amounting to more than three thousand crore rupees in MNREGA are in the offing," said noted social activist Nikhil Dey at a press conference here today.

They said as per figures released by NGO, Centre for Budget and Governance, currently the total budgetary spending on social sector is around 7 per cent of the GDP, 2 per cent of which comes from the Union Budget while the rest comes from the states.
Coming out against any possible dilution of MNREGA, economist Patnaik said that government's attempts to slash social sector funding are "fundamentally undemocratic and unconstitutional".

"The Right to Work has been enshrined through an unanimous resolution passed in the Parliament which made it a part of the basic structure of the Constitution. One simply cannot violate the basic structure because that would be unconstitutional," he said.

P Kousalya, a representative of Positive Women's Network, claimed the government had cut allocation to the National AIDS Control Programme-IV in the current financial year which she termed as very unfortunate.
"Such budget crunch will not only impact the lives of people living with HIV but will also lead to resurgence of the epidemic," she said.
Asking for the details to be put in public domain, economist Ghose warned the government against any cuts in allocation in the Revised Estimates "bypassing Parliament".
"After getting the Finance Bill passed in Parliament through a majority vote, the government cannot bring the cuts in the Revised Estimates surreptitiously bypassing the Parliament," she said, calling for a larger public scrutiny of the reported measures.

The activists questioned the government's focus on reducing fiscal deficit, which has been pegged at 4.1 per cent of GDP by the government for 2014-15.
"At this point it is essential to stimulate domestic demand. No businessmen would invest in a economy that is in recession," Patnaik said, urging the government to expand the size of the Union Budget as a proportion of the GDP by increasing the country's tax-GDP ratio.