The Prime Minister’s direction to the ministries concerned came after the The Indian Express reported that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had severely criticised implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and the Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission. The CAG had cited several cases of corruption, fraud and mismanagement.

The PM wants the ministries to “set up a comprehensive and effective monitoring mechanism within the ministry and, wherever possible, such a mechanism should include a strong element of external monitoring and feedback.” “The outcomes of the monitoring exercise by the ministries are to be placed in the public domain on periodic basis in the websites of the ministries,” the PM was quoted as saying in a letter from the Cabinet Secretariat.

Conveying the PM’s “observation”, Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrasekhar last month directed all departments to identify and list all flagship programmes and major initiatives since June 2004; prepare an Action Taken Report; put in place a monitoring mechanism, including external monitoring; and, put outcomes of such monitoring on the website.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram, in his Budget speech, had said that though some ministries had started concurrent evaluation, it needed to be supplemented by independent evaluations conducted by research institutions.

He announced a Central Plan Schemes Monitoring System “to put in place effective monitoring, evaluation and accounting systems” for the large sums of money disbursed by the Centre to the states and other implementing agencies.

So far, evaluation of each scheme has been with the implementing agencies thereby negating an independent progress report.

“The Comptroller & Auditor General, which does a post mortem of each project through accounting, has been able to provide a dated inspection of the programmes by which time most money is already spent,” said an official with the Department of Expenditure.

Sources said that though the PM’s direction would allow ministries to hire multinational consultants, since these private agencies did not have the extended reach into rural India it was likely that the work would fall on institutions such as IIM and Administrative Staff College of India.

Besides the Bharat Nirman Scheme, the UPA’s eight flagship programmes are:

* National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme: A legal guarantee of employment in all 596 rural districts.

* Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission: Improving urban infrastructure.

* Rajiv Gandhi National Drinking Water Mission: Supply of safe drinking water.

* Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan: Infrastructure and access for free primary education.

* Mid-day Meal Scheme: Lunch in government-aided upper primary classes.

* National Rural Health Mission: Community owned, decentralised health delivery system.

* Integrated Child Development Services Scheme: Health benefits to children, pregnant and lactating mothers.