NEW DELHI: When finance minister P Chidambaram presents his first interim budget on Monday, he is expected to devote a significant chunk of his speech - which may be between 12 and 18 pages - to UPA government 's spending on social sector schemes, especially health education and rural development But what is probably going to slip through is the fact that these sectors actually witnessed a comparatively low increase in government spending during UPA's 10 years in office.Primary education just about makes it to the list of top 10 ministries in terms of rise in allocation, with higher education ranked 12th, drinking water at number 17 and health at 18. Land resources along with rural development, despite the much-criticised employment guarantee law, are ranked tenth and eleventh, respectively.Much higher on the list, at number three, is petroleum as higher fuel subsidies have pushed up the allocation more than 18 times to around Rs 65,200 crore in 2013-14, compared with Rs 3,567 crore in the revised estimates for 2004-05.Fuel subsidy jumped due to massive handouts for subsidised cooking gas to the middle class and the super-rich, who imposed a further burden as three-fourths of the cars, led by luxury vehicles, now run on diesel.In fact, the allocation for the three main subsidies - fuel, food and fertiliser - went up almost five times during the last 10 years, when the Centre's spending more than trebled from a little over Rs 5 lakh crore in 2004-05 to the Rs 16.6 lakh crore budgeted for the current year.Fertiliser saw an over four-fold rise, while food doles went up three-and-a-half times during the last 10 years. Interest subsidies, which are budgeted for separately, have increased almost 14.5 times to over Rs 8,000 crore as the government started handing out incentives to farmers who repaid loans on time after complaints that UPA-I's Rs 70,000 crore debt relief rewarded defaulters.Just as fuel subsidies were skimmed largely by the rich, repeated bailouts for cash-strapped Air India - which is a transport not used by the aam aadmi - has resulted in a near 16-fold rise in allocation for civil aviation.An analysis of the funds allocated to each ministry between the revised estimates for 2004-05, when Chidambaram presented his first budget for the UPA, and the budget estimates for 2013-14 shows that the ministries of panchayati raj and planning have walked away with the largest jump in allocations. For instance, the allocation for panchayati raj has jumped from Rs 10 crore in 2004-05 to over Rs 7,000 crore now. A bulk of this jump is on account of the Backward Regions Grant Fund, which received an allocation for Rs 6,500 during the current financial year.In case of the ministry of planning, for 2013-14, Chidambaram had announced a one-off support of Rs 5,000 crore for new programmes, while another Rs 2,600 crore had been allocated for the Aadhaar cards, which now have little relevance for the much-talked direct cash transfer plan.A large part of the funds meant for new programmes may end up as "savings" as the finance minister is going to announce steep cuts on Monday to stay within the fiscal deficit target of 4.8% of GDP.The focus on subsidies and handouts has meant that there has been little funding for infrastructure - identified as one of the key drags on the economy. Power is the only sector that has seen allocation rise faster than the government's overall spending. But the four-fold rise is not on account of investment in setting up new electricity plants. In 2013-14, exactly half the allocation of Rs 8,000 crore for the power ministry is meant for rural electrification subsidy, while another Rs 1,500 crore will go towards restructuring loans of power distribution companies in the states.Among the other infrastructure sectors, the growth in spending on roads just about kept pace with overall expenditure, while the under-spending on railways and shipping is showing across the country.