THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Decentralization in the state, the policies and projects devised for the furtherance of the grassroots experiment, is based on faulty and whimsical numbers.
The financial reporting system in local bodies, an exercise that is supposed to reflect the true state of affairs, is in shambles.
There is no real-time data entry in local bodies even a decade and a half after the People’s Plan project was launched.
There is no quality control at the data entry point to ensure veracity of the figure entered. There is no internal mechanism for data check and data validation either. In short, anarchy prevails.
“The local government dataset in Kerala is not a reliable one,” said Dr M A Oommen, the state’s foremost decentralization expert. “Though we had changed from a single entry system to a double entry accounting system, this ad hoc approach to accounting has continued till now,” he said.
The shift from the simple single entry system to the double-entry system too had caused problems. The figures of the earlier manual system have not yet been reconciled with the new system, which came into force only in 2011. This has created ludicrous accounting dilemmas for planners. For instance, records do not show the assets in the possession of the panchayats prior to 2011.
And then, as Dr Oommen puts it, “the crowning scandal”. Budgets of local bodies, unlike that of the state and Centre, are not attached any value.
“The budget is passed and then simply forgotten. This chaotic planning process has caused serious problem in expenditure control and revenue mobilization,” a senior Panchayat Directorate official said.
More than accounting inefficiency, technical incompetence is at the heart of the malaise. Dr Thomas Joseph, who had carried out a study on the reliability problems of annual financial statements of local governments, said that persons deputed in a panchayat to enter data had no operational knowledge of the Sankya software which is used to enter data in local bodies.
