editor speak

A guaranteed job, 100 days of employment and a decent pay every week, everything about the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act scheme seemed to be noble mission with noble vision. But the glitter around the so-called job guarantee scheme is now flaking off and one could slowly but steadily see the real face of the MNREGA and the lacunae in its implementation.

Bureaucracy Today's Cover Story—NREGA: Who is to be blamed?— has fizzled out the big promises and achievements being touted by the UPA Government on television these days.

Till now the media had been pointing out the poor wage structure and faulty implementation of the scheme in various states, but Bureaucracy Today for the first time has brought out strong evidence about the possible siphoning off of Rs 593.4 crore from a whopping Rs 40,100 crore in its 2009-10 financial report. The perplexed Ministry officials admit that erroneous and misleading figures do exist in the report.

Their excuse was, "We take into account the data given by the State Governments as it is", but our argument is that when the data is collected from the States, how could it lead to errors in the total expenditure figure that is calculated by the Ministry in New Delhi? We found disparities in the figures quoted in many such parameters mentioned in the financial reports.

It may be noted that it is on the basis of these inflated figures that the budget for the next fiscal for the implementation of the NREGA will be zeroed in on. This figure has jumped from the initial Rs. 11,300 crore to the current Rs. 40,100 crore. Why wouldn't it jump if the budget is based on wrong expenditure data?

What is ironic is that though there is a law, there is no one single authority that can be held responsible for the ruckus that is slowly spurting up. Panchayats blame the State Governments which in turn put the puddle of allegations at the Centre. In this awkward situation the Centre has no clue as to whom it should pass the buck.

Probably the Government's move to bring the NREGA scheme under the ambit of the Central Vigilance Commission is a ploy to save its face. The complaints with the Ministry of Rural Development are lying unattended. Does the Ministry lack power to act upon them? If the NREGA scheme has to be implemented efficiently at the national level why not the Chief Ministers should be held accountable for their Governments supplying wrong figures to the Centre? Couldn't these complaints be forwarded to the Prime Minister's Office if there is absence of an authority to look into this matter? It is high time the PMO took some strong steps before the helium balloon called NREGA bursts. The UPA Government must understand that the extent of development is missing at the ground level. At the end of the day it is hard-earned tax payers' money and the Government is accountable for every single penny of it.


Suhaib A. Ilyasi
Editor-in-chief