Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today promised Rahul Gandhi that a decision on his request to extend the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to the entire country would be taken soon. Rahul made the request when he went to wish the Prime Minister on his birthday.
While Rahul Gandhi was making his representation beginning the process of associating himself with the UPA’s populist schemes, the BBC threw cold water on the Congress performance in implementing NREGA.
There is an interesting political sidelight to the scheme – early data is showing that three of the top performing states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – in terms of generating employment are ruled by the opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
That was the BBC’s Soutik Biswas in his piece on how disappointing the EGS has been in other states.
Wait there is more bad news for the Congress on its flagship program
Jean Dreze says the scheme’s transparency safeguards, helped by the landmark right to information law, can go a long way in preventing corruption. A recent verification of workers rolls in two districts in Chhattisgarh found that 95% of wages paid according to the workers registers had actually been received by concerned workers.
Contrast this with Jharkhand where the Congress has propped up a puppet regime
a verification of the attendance registers in a district in eastern Jharkhand state last October found that only 15% of the wages paid had actually reached the workers.
But the real slap in the face for those who swear by the “aam aadmi”, “inclusive growth”, “social justice” come from this
The scheme seems to have flopped in the western Maharashtra and eastern West Bengal states, the first known for its administrative acumen and the second for its pro-poor Communist government.
Offstumped Bottomline – Those who swear by the aam aadmi do so merely to pay lip service.
Rajasthan, for example, has been found to be the top performer among all major states – every rural family has got 77 days of work and 67% of the women have got work. Moreover 73% of the funding has gone on wages, rather than other spending, which is much higher than anticipated.
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Link to the article?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7005985.stm
it is anyway proven that NDA has a better record at building infrastructure than the congress governments. just that these governments utilize the nrga to get funds for their infrastructure projects
shashi – bottomline it is their pet project notice the way rahul gandhi trooped over to race course road to grab some headlines on it with his 10 handlers.
Guys, it is the aam admi who votes, and i hope if these stats are right, BJP ruled states wont face anti-incumbency and will hold power and congress will lose power in its states. So in 2009 BJP should have Punjab, Uttaranchal, Rajastan, MP, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Delhi, Rule Karnataka and dislodge congress from WHERE???. Do they rule any state, well yes hope they dislodge them from Maharashtra, AP will be tough (YSR seems to be popular except the recent blunders). Otherwise Congress has nothing. BJP should rob jharkhand also and hope their allies in orissa and bihar do well.
Well again all this is based on the assumption that the aam admi is satisfied with the BJP in their states and is disillusioned with the congress.