Welfare scheme beneficiaries line up at a primary health centre in Vaishali. Telegraph picture

Patna, May 9: The Bihar government is working on a proposal to bring down the number of state-sponsored schemes from existing 634 to around 100.

The state government wo-uld set up a committee, likely to be headed by development commissioner, which would carr yout this work. Senior officers of planning and development department and finance department would form the core of this committee, while departmental heads of other departments would be consulted during the course of the bundling of schemes of departments concerned.

“A proposal in this regard would soon be sent for the approval of the chief minister and after getting the nod, the work on bundling of schemes would be started,” a senior state government official, who refused to be named, told The Telegraph.

A plethora of schemes on the same issue often becomes confusing for the beneficiaries as well as the field officials. For example, a student seeking stipend can choose from at least eight schemes — post-matric stipend, high school stipend, middle school stip-end, primary school stipend, musahar stipend, hostelier’s stipend, stipend for technical courses and stipend to wards of the people engaged in unclean occupation. The proposal will aim to bring similar schemes under the same head.

The official further said apart from taking suggestions from different officials, the committee would seek suggestions from people too as they are the beneficiaries of such schemes. “The whole process is likely to take two to three months and the bundling work would be completed in the current fiscal (2011-12) itself,” added the official.

Sharing details about the exercise, the official said, “Field officials find it tough to keep tabs on so many schemes. Bundling work would enhance their efficiency as they would have to devote less time on monitoring of implementation of different schemes.”

The same would apply to departmental heads also as during review meetings, it becomes very tiresome for them to review the achievements of hundreds of scheme in one go.

In case of office-bearers of panchayati raj institutions (PRIs), the same thing would apply as they too get confused with the plethora of schemes and a good chunk of their tenure is spent understanding the details of these schemes.

As far as people are concerned, said the official, the move is going to be of great help as too many schemes in one department force them to fall in the trap of middlemen, who in the name of providing help, demand cut money from benefits given to beneficiaries by the state government.

Given that Bihar has witnessed a jump in plan expenditure in the past few years, the move is also likely to help the planning process as the planners, while making allocations to different sectors, would have less number of schemes to take care of.

Bihar had a planned expenditure of Rs 18,500 crore in 2010-11 against target of Rs 18,351 crore. The state has a plan size of Rs 24,000 crore this fiscal (2011-12).

Incidentally, the Centre too is moving in similar direction and Planning Commission has set up a sub-committee which would suggest ways to bring down the number of central schemes from existing 147 to around 30. Bihar chief secretary Anup Mukerji is one of the members of this committee.

The Bihar government has been demanding reduction in the number of central sche-mes for quite some time. The state is pressing for allocation of central funds under different sectors, allowing the government to decide the allocation of funds in accordance with local requirements.