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HIMACHAL
The financial position of the government will worsen progressively as the gap between income and expenditure widens steadily on account of increasing wage-bill and other committed liabilities due to unfavourable recommendations of the 13th Finance Commission, which have come into force from the current fiscal. Adopting a normative approach the commission assessed the annual salary bill at Rs 3600 crore and pension burden at Rs 1,400 crore against the actual combined expenditure of Rs 5,800 crore. The gap of over Rs 1000 crore will keep increasing further and the government will have no option but to give up its populist policies and return to the fiscal correction path, from which it veered away over the past two years.
The government has to review its conflicting policies in respect of environment if it has to achieve the much publicised goal of making Himachal Pradesh, the first carbon neutral state and an international tourist destination. The large-scale diversion of forest land for setting up cement plants, power plants and big industrial projects will hasten the process of environmental degradation in the ecologically fragile hill state. Moreover, tourism and polluting industries hardly go together. Over 9100 hectares of forest land have been diverted after the enforcement of the Forest Conservation Act and it was for this reason that Himachal was recommended the least green bonus of Rs 100 crore among all Himalayan states by the 13th Finance Commission on the basis of actual forest cover. Anther serious issue to ponder over is whether the state needs the Apartment Act, which only serves the interests of the real estate players. The hills have been already burdened beyond their carrying capacity, as is evident from the increasing pressure on precious natural resourses like water and land, and the policy of allowing outsiders to build flats and sell these to outsiders will spell doom for the state.
Stringent corrective measures are required to clear the mess created in the field of higher education due to opening the floodgates for private institutions and universities, and surfacing of fake certificates scam in the state board of school education and Himachal Pradesh University. The government was forced to enact a law to set up a regulatory commission after it came under fire for allowing private universities of doubtful credentials without putting in place any regulatory mechanism. However, unless it shows political will to enforce the norms laid down by the UGC for deemed universities and sends the sub-standard institutions packing, it will not be possible to salvage " higher education" from the morass it has sunk to. The state is already being compared to Bihar, which is not good for the image of the government. The government has launched several initiatives but it has failed to make even a beginning as far as the Information Technology(IT) industry is concerned, which is quite surprising, as it was the Dhumal government which framed the first IT policy in 2001. It is time for the government to put IT industry on the top of agenda as it is not only environment friendly and hardly consumes any power but also has a vast potential for creating employment for the educated youth. More so, as the large number of technical institutions are turning out computer engineers by thousands and there is not a single job for them in the state.
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Similarly, it has to
come out with a policy to protect agriculture land as its large-scale
diversion for non-agricultural use is undermining the initiatives
taken to boost agricultural growth. Unfortunately, Section 118 of the
State Land Reforms and Tenancy Act, which debars non-agriculturists
from purchasing agriculture land without the prior permission of
government, has become a convenient tool in the hands of politicians
to facilitate such undesirable change of land use.