I don’t think you’re understanding the sense it’s being used. The NREG, from an economic development standpoint, functions as a dole. The point isn’t that people get to sit there and get money for free. The point is that you’re handing money out to people without any expectation of return. The objective of the program is to hand out money. The “employment” bit is a screening mechanism to only get the most desperate applicants.

Infrastructure development from the program has been paltry and there isn’t anything going towards improving the total productivity of the work-force. So how is that functionally any different from just handing out money? Just because you’re giving people busy-work in exchange for the money doesn’t mean we’re building anything worthwhile. We might as well hire them to dig ditches, fill them back up, and then dig them out again and again.

Now the Planning Commission has accepted the Tendulkar Commission’s findings that poverty is about 10% higher than the govt claimed and has been that way for a decade at least.

I always find these studies comical because it generally just comes down to semantic arguments as to what constitutes “poverty.” Then again I’ve never been a big on getting headcounts of the poor just for the sake of having a number. As an ordinal measurement to inform how we distribute our resources sure, but as some kind of cardinal census thing it strikes me as a pointless exercise in futility. Let’s just learn to understand that there are a lot of poor people out there and do something about that instead of fussing over exactly how many.

2) This is just false and complete bullshit, sorry; the NREGA isn’t a dole, if anyone thinks it is either obviously don’t understand what a dole is. One of the problem of the NREGA has been underpayment – because for most schemes wage rates are calculated on a piece-rate basis – ie a certain amount of earth being dug or moved per day as based on what a healthy male labourer could do. Now because many labourers are either malnourished or women or old people, they are getting paid less than the minimum wage simply because they can’t perform to the standards of what a healthy male labourer would do. This isn’t like sitting at home and getting a dole. Secondly, much of the power of the fund distribution still lies with the district administration which basically means the BDO, PR secretary and at the top the SDO and DM; local politicians are only involved at the village level and they certainly don’t control funds disbursal. One reason why the NREGA is not as popular with local politicians compared to other contractor based schemes like the PMGSY.

3) That is really old hat and true of the first 2 years of the NREGA; the reason for that also is that for a number of technical reasons the NREGA was rolled out in a bigger way in backward, isolated regions dominated by adivasis which were controlled by the BJP at the time. This was mainly due to the initial selection of districts where it would be first phased in. The problem is who would get credit for the scheme – both the SP and the BSP in UP specifically decided not to implement* the NREGA rapidly because they felt it would benefit the Congress – Mulayam Singh actually launched a number of competing schemes aimed at unemployed graduates and Maywati rubbished the scheme several times in public speeches. One also needs to understand that people no longer vote the same way in national elections as they do in state elections; therefore it is quite possible for the Congress to benefit from the national elections for creating this scheme, while at the state elections different parties may benefit from implementing it. One thing is clear, it is very much associated with the other 7 rural development programmes rolled out by the UPA coalition under the so-called aam admi programme.

4) Who assumed that the NREGA reduced poverty? It wasn’t designed to do that but to act as a safety net. OF course poverty has increased – in fact the same economists like Jean Dreze who argued for the NREGA have been arguing that poverty is being undercounted in India – mainly because for ideological reasons in the mid-90s the NSSO changed the way poverty lines would be calculated so that neo-liberal fantasists like Bhalla and TN Srinivasan could claim that the reforms had reduced poverty. Now the Planning Commission has accepted the Tendulkar Commission’s findings that poverty is about 10% higher than the govt claimed and has been that way for a decade at least.

1. From what I have seen first hand in Andhra Pradesh, the NREGA scheme has contributed to a phenomenal increase in consumption of Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) in rural areas. The State Govt’s recent auction of liquor licenses saw exorbitant amounts being bidded for owning liquor shops even in remote villages in AP.By owning just 1 liquor license, one is entitled to setup dozens of belt shops (small outlets that could be run from even a hut).Travel outside urban areas in AP, and we may find many villages without proper water supply or roads, but every village will have a few belt shops.

2.NREGA is very much a dole and even the dole distribution is controlled by local politicians.It does not focus on building skills and making people employable.All it has done is increase the cost of agricultural labor in some areas, thus impacting small and middle class farmers.A much better way would have been a direct cash transfer scheme to women to their personal bank accounts.The cash transfers could be supplemented by food or education vouchers.

3.The biggest ‘successes’ in implementing NREGA are all from non-Congress, especially BJP ruled States.There is no evidence whatsoever that this scheme has benefited Congress in the elections.

4.Lastly, all kinds of surveys in the last few years have shown that poverty has increased in India.A simple look at the number of BPL families being covered under various schemes across the country will tell us this.I think some people are being too lazy and correlating the NREGA with an assumed reduction in poverty.

Here’s a look at NREGA by some one who has taken the trouble to Google for data.

It is difficult to measure the infrastruture impact of the NREGA, because few systematic assessments have been made and because the projects vary a lot depending on the district. Most of the concrete physical infrastructure projects are handicapped by the fact that there has to be a 60:40 labour to material ratio in the total cost, which means that building all whether roads can’t come under the NREGA – and as we know spending on rural road construction is the most effective way of increasing incomes and is very cost effective; most recent estimates by the WB claim that every rupee spent here generates another 10-15 in additional multiplier income effects. What is built under the NREGA are the red brick roads, which can’t stand heavy rain and are not very suitable for vehicles.

There is plenty of scope for employment-intensive projects in the country side, it is odd to assert otherwise but they need to be carefully planned and thought out.

Mr X said. “And here I thought that human greed was the same everywhere. Silly me.” Human greed is everywhere. But we are talking about corruption. You will agree that corruption is not the same everywhere.

Pardon me, but is not corruption human greed? I do not see animals taking bribes or looking the other way. Let us agree that greed is the distortion of something in exchange for an incentive. How would you differentiate that greed is not corruption?

The NREG “jobs” aren’t really “jobs.” The effect on actual infrastructure development has been pretty modest. The “employment” in this case isn’t to give people jobs as it is to give them a dole. The “job” part of it mostly functions as a good way to screen for people who value that wage enough to be willing to stand out in the Indian sun melting tar all day. That probably wasn’t intentional by design but it happened to work out that way by happy coincidence. If they didn’t have the employment component you’d just have the same old paper-pushers signing on to draw a dole even though they didn’t really need it.

It would be nice if we actually had something useful for them to do, but most of these people aren’t really all that employable in higher-paying (generally understood to mean higher-skill) private sector work. At a bare minimum you need to get them to functional literacy and numeracy. You can’t even get hired as a household servant if you can’t add and subtract. Hopefully we can have the money brought into households going towards educating some of the younger children in the family towards that end. We will see how that works out over the next 5-10 years.

politics said “Government should be pared down.” Yes, But not in dollar terms but in the areas the government controls.”

politics said “:Also, in a society of multiple religions as well as groups that prefer secularism, would there be means to foster a coherent society, or would society atomize and would pursuit of profit remain one of only a handful of ways to participate in the broader society?” While i approve the separation of church and state, that only means that cardinals or mullahs should not be running the country.But ultimately, all politics is about religion. Our values as a country are derived from the religion of the majority. So a country of multiple religions only exists in theory. ultimately,it is about the religion of christianity.