Passionate About India

We are probably among those few developing countries that are pegged to be next superpowers but who still do not have any idea of their unemployment rates, birthrates, income disparities and actual poverty counts. This is quite clear just from our government data. Imagine; various commissions of the same government come out with separate reports on poverty that have different counts! If that was surprising, then consider the unemployment rate shown by different government agencies – the figures vary so widely that they seem to be of different nations than of one. Our NSSO surveys go steps ahead. Firstly, the data takes inordinately long, many quarters, to compile, assemble and analyse; secondly, the credibility and accuracy is still always under doubt. And finally, our census count, which is the worst of all. While most countries are undertaking their census exercises every year in order to comprehend the real-time social and economic situation of their respective countries, our census...

TOWARDS LONG TERM PRODUCTIVE MEANS AND NOT ALCOHOL! When NREGA was launched in the year 2006, it was one of the biggest leaps taken by the UPA government to productively engage the underprivileged rural folk and connect them to the mainstream, a move which was due for long. From Rs 11,000 crores as the initial outlay, the same NREGA has grown to Rs 40,100 crores in the current year, encompassing each and every district of the country. Although a phenomenal initiative, from the very beginning, the NREGA has been marred with delivery bottlenecks. Like in most other cases, corruption this time too at every stage robbed the poor rural folk of their dues. The only consolation being that at least something is reaching them, compared to nothing in the past! But then, I recently came across this disturbing news! It has been reported that Indian made foreign liquor (IMFL) sales have been going up as an aftereffect of the NREGA scheme. On hindsight, this was clearly predictable, but this was som...

In the current Union Budget, while the UPA government was increasing the allocation for its flagship NREGA program – from Rs 16,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore, resulting in a hike of an incredible 87% – it was again surreptitiously trying to ignore the CAG report. The CAG, or the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, has been consistently criticizing the government for alleged misappropriation of funds, faulty record maintenance systems and rampant corruption that have become synonymous with NREGA and similar other government initiatives. For example, for the financial year ended March 2007, out of an outlay of Rs 12,074 crores, all that was spent was Rs 8,823 crores for NREGA. Not just this, the CAG report also indicted the government for making available only 37.05 man-days of work against the promised 100 man-days. For the year 2007-08, the more shocking revelation that was made by CAG was that while the government had allocated more that Rs 51,000 crore to NGOs for implementing w...

Immediately after Rahul Gandhi was appointed as the General Secretary of the AICC, he – along with a dozen other appointees – demanded to the Honourable Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh that the ‘iconic’ National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) be extended to the entire nation. This is a quantum jump considering that the scheme encompasses only 330 districts currently. Well, how much of this calibrated action would eventually help the Congress Party in the forthcoming elections is a matter of debate, but the bigger contention is the scheme in itself, which – though brilliant in theory – in practice, has failed to deliver as tangible benefits for the poorer masses of the country in its current form. The NREGA has been drawing flak for long. And surprisingly, the criticism of this scheme has not just been coming from liberal economists and market analysts alone, for whom the fiscal health of the government is more important than anything else. In fact, the more vociferous protest...