- . The Government has well-designed schemes. The question is not about intention but that of implementation of these schemes. There was not a proper identification of the targeted beneficiaries.
- There is also a lack of awareness of these schemes amongst the masses, given their illiteracy and ignorance.
- There is also an absence of any monitoring mechanism for the efficacy of such schemes or to know the end result. The focus is on increased outlays and new schemes but there is no mechanism of tracking down the outcome.
- It may be better to implement these programmes through NGOs after a strict screening process and also with proper checks and balances in place.
- There is a need to bring in an independent ‘social audit’ of these schemes not for fixing accountability but for plugging leakages, improving delivery so as to make the schemes effective and true to their intention for the overall benefit of the social sector.
- Today, there is an availability of modern technology which can be deployed for capturing information and creating a database which will enable a tracking mechanism for the target group and their reach and will be useful in refining the schemes in future.
- Finally, the focus of the government has been on schemes, so many that they overlap with diffused focus and accountability at different levels.
The aspect of changing the orientation from schemes to the people in the villages could be a better strategy and it also leads to convergence of all the schemes. This could be done following the cluster approach’ which is implementing all the schemes starting from the most backward villages, bunched together as a cluster, for the schemes to be implemented and ensuring their sustainability by transferring the onus of further development to the villages and then moving to another cluster.