The realization, even if belated, has finally dawned upon the Government that there is something amiss in the system of developmental projects in the State that hinders completion of various projects within the scheduled time frame. Projects floated by the State or by the Centre, generally are not completed within the stipulated time and various reasons, convincing or not, are given by executing agencies to shield their inability of keeping the time frame. In these columns we have so often drawn the attention of the Government to this recurring; phenomenon and have analyzed the impact of non-delivery on the overall performance of the Government. Usually ministers vie with one another in making loud public announcements of floating one or the other project and thus create an atmosphere of expectancy among the unsuspecting masses of people. These are political gimmicks often resorted to by irresponsible politicians. Moreover, absence of accountability of the executing agencies encourages them to inordinately delay the completion of the projects intentionally with the purpose of escalating cost of construction and thereby draw financial mileage out of a given project.
We have come to know that the Chief Minister has pondered over the problem. He has been informed about non completion of a large number of State or Centre floated developmental projects hanging fire for many years. He has devised a strategy of overcoming this phenomenon. We believe that the strategy now devised is worth making an experiment. It is yet premature to make any calculation of success or failure of the strategy.
The strategy is to make the District Development Commissioners and Heads of the Departments responsible for not only periodically monitoring the progress of projects sponsored by the State or the Centre or a Public Undertaking but also submitting reports on the progress to the Chief Minister’s secretariat. The Secretary Planning will be calling a meeting of the DDCs and HoDs and will convey to them the instructions formulated by the Government with the purpose of keeping a close watch on the progress of major developmental projects particularly ensuring that their completion is brought about within the stipulated time. An important instruction is that an announcement of time frame for any project will not be made unless the concerned DC of the concerned district where the project is floated confirms the date of completion. In this process, the DCs will first make a list of projects floated by the State or the Centre that can be completed by the end of the year. All the projects/schemes either in the State Sector or the District Sector would become part of these lists. Even the works going on under various Centrally Sponsored Schemes would be reflected along with the dates of their completion during the current year.
Reading between the lines, two things come to surface. One is that realization has dawned upon the Government that there is something basically wrong in developmental process in the state that needs to be looked into and negative trend arrested. The realization is belated. Nevertheless, as the axiom goes that it is never late to mend, we hope that there will be a meaningful change in Government’s approach to the implementation of projects. The second thing worth noticing is that the Chief Minister finds it necessary to make a focal agency responsible for execution of the project in time and monitor the progress right from the beginning of the project to its final completion. This is a very significant decision because hitherto, a number of agencies involved in the formulation, announcement, execution and completion of the project worked without cohesion and often adopted their individual approach that made no one agency responsible and answerable. This is a sort of stalemate ultimately leading to delay in bringing the project to completion. But under new strategy, two most important Government officers will be responsible for monitoring the progress of the project and will be reporting Departments. No Minister will make any announcement of the final date of completion unless the same is endorsed and certified by the DC of the district concerned. In other words it means that no false and misleading promises will be made to the public.
On the face of it, the strategy seems well considered and viable. It should be given a chance. We hope that focusing responsibility on the DCs and HoDs is a realistic and sensible strategy. In normal conditions it should succeed.
Follow our WhatsApp channel