Known by its ungainly acronym NREGA (National Rural Employment Guarantee Act), the underlying programme aimed at jobs creation and increasing the purchasing power of the bottom of the heap blue collar workers living in nearly 600 districts across the country.

Starting with 200 districts in 2006, it aimed to cover all 600 districts in five years. But finding the going rather good, it covered the entire country in three years up to 2009. India is known for its grand planning talents but notoriously poor for its delivery systems. The confessional observation of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, the late husband of Congress president Sonia Gandhi — the woman behind the Manmohan government's socialist concern for the poor and the Aam Admi (common man), that of every one rupee spent on any project in India, only 10 paisa or one-tenth actually reaches the person for whom it is designed rings loud even 25 years after it was first made. However, NREGA seems to have escaped that fate, at least partly. Even some of the most well-informed critics like former Reserve Bank of India governor Bimal Jalan have conceded at least 50 per cent success in its delivery.

This half-success of the programme has infused such confidence among the lowest wage earners making one to two dollars a day that some of them have stopped making their 800-mile trek from, say, Bihar to Punjab in search of seasonal harvesting work on farms. Prosperous farmers in Punjab have to offer blandishments to workers from Bihar to ensure timely service. The blue collar labourers are being offered varying advance payments, certainly return fares, for turning up at the right time. Their contribution is critical and recognised so with money and open appreciation — not unlike the easy passages and public invitations made to workers in West Indies and Punjab for migration to rebuild the war-shattered economy of Britain in the 1945-55 years.

Europe, which has shut the door to blue collar workers from India and elsewhere in recent years, may yet need them once again. The ageing profile and fertility decline in many of the European and other developing countries will need to be balanced by inviting workers from countries like India with younger age profile. And tomorrow's India may not have as many willing migrants as she has today or in past years. Give NREGA another 10 or 20 years and Europe and India could have a different equation.

Yes, it could happen in 10 or 20 years. Not today or tomorrow. NREGA is only three years old. Lots of teething troubles have still to be overcome. The issuing of job cards to workers and prompt payment for work done is still lagging in half the states of the country. The programme which promises only 100 days of ensured work in a year needs to be enlarged to cover 200 days of employment. There is also a provision for unemployment dole or payment, as yet more on paper than on the ground. So far it's a job only half done. But it's well begun and well rewarded with election victory for the Congress led coalition of United Progressive Alliance (UPA).

In the naxalite (Maoist) violence-affected eastern state of Jharkhand, a central investigation team from the Delhi School of Economics, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh used to teach years ago, recently found that the delivery system was a total shambles. The team, influenced by Dr Jean Dreze, a Belgian-born economist and others at the school, found that in some areas no project had been taken up while in others workers had not been paid for work done months or even one to two years ago. Dreze and colleague Reetika Khera have recommended enhanced payment for work done and penalty for officials responsible for the delay, according to a report in The Hindu newspaper.

From the neighbouring state of Bihar, parts of which are also affected by Maoist activism, comes a report which tells of a 'new set of bankers' in the poverty ridden countryside. They are none others than the Maoists themselves who offer 'hassle-free loans' to the poor involving no cumbersome loan applications with lots of conditions in small print and no cuts or bribes for the babus (staff), says the report in the Hindustan Times. Operating in the remoter parts of the districts of East and West Champaran, Sitamarhi and Muzaffarpur where the writ of the government prevails rather thinly, the Maoist lenders are said to charge no interest on loans for marriages and funerals and only 2 to 4 per cent for 'higher education.' In return all they ask for is loyalty.

But where do they get money to lend? By robbing the government or government-recognised private banks. Robbing Peter to pay Paul seems to be the modus operandi of the Maoists. All poor Paul is interested in is loan cash, not where it comes from.   

The government is aware of such shortcomings and challenges to its governance. NREGA is also the real answer to naxalite or Maoist challenge, besides the spending on paramilitary operations on which so much, rather over much, emphasis is being laid.

The government has rightly instructed the federal or Reserve Bank to open more facilities in the countryside to ensure that the poor farmhands working under NREGA or other schemes receive their wages directly and not through any middle men, officials or contractors. Panchayat raj working through the village or parish council is the mantra of the government's NREGA initiative which has achieved considerable, though incomplete, success in turning the rural economy round. 
 
Loan waivers for poor farmers, often in the news for committing suicides under the burden of loans from private sharks, constitute the other major initiative of the Congress-led coalition government over the past five years. Much against the advice of the IMF-style bankers and financial pundits, the government waived loans worth 66,000 crore rupees ($16 billion) for farmers, a majority of whom have holdings of less than five acres (two hectares). Benefiting over 36.8 million families, it's pretty thinly spread out but fulfils a vital need of communities across the country. In the comparative balance, $16 billion pales into insignificance against the NPAs (non-performing assets) of banks — in reality loan waivers for some of the rich and infamous of business and industry.

top