Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has asked the Planning Commission and other government departments to set up a system for an evaluation of its flagship programmes in the social sector considering that the government pumps in huge amount of funds to boost education, health and rural employment programmes.

He has called upon the Commission, the Finance Ministry and Department of Statistics to collectively work out details of setting up an office for that purpose. Dr. Singh has also said the Government was making all non-strategic information public. A proactive policy of disclosure would be in keeping with the spirit of Right to Information Act. Information collected at huge cost with the tax payers' money, should be made available to the general public, without their having to ask for it. The Prime Minister was addressing a national conference of state ministers in charge of statistics. He said the government should be at arm's length from the process of independent evaluation of flagship social sector programmes. At present the evaluation function is done by several wings of the government and cannot be called independent.

National Statistical Commission chairman Suresh Tendulkar has admitted that data collection has deteriorated and was on the verge of collapsing. The virtual neglect and the low priority accorded to recording storage, retrieval and processing of the flow of date from statutory or other returns have resulted in official data becoming suspect in terms of reliability and completeness.

Another aspect of social development that is the government's priority is education-elementary and secondary and higher. However, it is found that there is a general wave of discontent among the teachers because of the mismatch between growing expectation and their stagnant salaries. Added to that is the society's increasing disrespect for the profession, and thus one realizes why teachers are a demoralized lot.

According to Mohammad Akhtar Siddiqui, chairman National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), there is a shortage of three lakh teachers at the elementary level. The situation of higher education level is no better. It is believed that the reasons behind this poor state of affairs arises because teachers are not given the opportunity to contribute to nation building. The official feels continued motivation is lacking among teachers as the profession is not given its due recognition even today. We give our teachers authority and responsibility but not autonomy to experiment and innovate, thus the situation does not improve.

Office bearer of Association of Indian Universities (AIU) D Dongaonkar has said in the media : besides the judicious expansion if higher education adequate funding, freedom for professors to work and the creation of a mechanism to attract quality students are some of the issues that need to be addressed, with immediate effect.

Health for all is another critical factor which needs a howk's eye – and a reality check. According to reports, a row has erupted over a move to make a vaccine against pneumonia part of the immunization programme. Pneumonia is said to be the cause of death of almost one in every five children in the under five age group. That according to supporters of the pneumonococcal vaccine, mainly World Health Organisation is enough reason for the vaccine to be made part of the programme. On September 1, WHO bulletin published a letter casting serous doubts regarding the use of the new pnuemonoccal vaccine. The letter points out that an analysis of all studies of the vaccine shows that it does not reduce the incidence of clinical pneumonia. The letter also pointed out that an analysis had shown that the vaccine only reduced the chance of radiological pneumonia and not of clinical pneumonia. The controversy arises because treatment of pneumonia through antibiotics is far less expensive than through immunization. WHO has defended it's vaccine but admitted that it does not reduce clinical pneumonia. The reply has also admitted that only 3.6 percent cases of pneumonia are prevented for 1000 children immunized. If four children could be saved by treating them with Septran, which would cost Rs. 40 only, why would a cash strapped country like India opt for vaccination of 1000 children, which would cost Rs. 1.2 crores. Issues like this need the attention of the health authorities who are committed to an ailment free India.

Farmer's issues and now common suicides by them due to debt burden over the years have drawn attention to in recent weeks. Coming down heavily on the UPA government for its failure to address inequalities faced by small and marginal farmers by its policies and programmes, a government panel has recommended formation of an institutional mechanism – Farmers' Debt Relief Commission in states facing agrarian distress.

According to a report 'Proposal for a Special Programme for Marginal and Small Farmers, prepared by Arjun Sengupta led National Commission on Enterprises in Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), a large majority of small and marginal farmers is out of the ambit of government's loan waiver scheme, announced in the budget of 2008-09. Of small and marginal farmers with per capita land holdings of less than two hectares, only 13.6 to 21.8 percent, have access to formal credit. Since a majority of them lie outside the institutional credit framework, they cannot lay claim to the UPA government's populist farm loan waiver scheme.

The Commission has recommended that priority sector lending guidelines should be revised and a target of 10 percent needs to be fixed for this segment. Reserve Bank of India, it says, should separately monitor the credit-low progress. Even government's minimum support price has not been successful as its coverage in terms of crops area is small, says the report.

With the next Lok Sabha elections scheduled in April May 2009, if the Congress or any other combo government hopes to return to power at the Centre, it is high time that the fine tooth comb be applied for review of existing and on going welfare and development programmes.

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