It’s been a hard day’s night

An exhausted Santosh Singh, a poor wage-earner, has been waiting for more than an hour outside the Block Development Officer's (BDO's) office at Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh. The BDO promptly questions the reason for Singh's visit. An angry but calm Santosh complains: "We are not being given cards, jobs or due wages while people of the sarpanch's caste are being favoured. Decisions are being taken unilaterally and no members of the panchayat are being consulted. The sarpanch doesn't listen to us and has done everything he can for the members of his own community."

The BDO and other government officers start laughing hysterically. Then they give Santosh a piece of precious advise: Go settle your score with the sarpanch on your own? Why bother the BDO sahib? They categorically warn him that he shouldn't come to the BDO office for such trivial matters. Santosh insists. He wants a probe. The BDO looks enraged, but laughs and asks him to "go meet the district collector (DC)," the big boss in the district. Santosh tries to convince him that this is impossible - "the DC would never meet him" -- but his plea meets deaf ears.

Santosh revealed that in his village jobs are being given only to men of the dominant caste, while they have been asking for jobs for a long time now. There is (corruption) of funds. And he is sure that for the poor of this district, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has turned out to be a damp sqib -- more hype than hope.

Madhya Pradesh, which is among the top states in the expenditure list, is apparently deep in corruption. "MP is one of the most corrupt states in the country when it comes to siphoning of NREGA funds. The state has spent one-fifth of the total funds allocated for the country while more than 50 per cent of the funds were systematically siphoned off. Corruption is not only confined to MP. Many other states are showing similar patterns," claims Parshuram Ray, Director, Centre for Environment and Food Security, based in Delhi.

NREGA, perhaps one of world's most ambitious and largest public employment generation schemes, recently completed two years of its implementation amid more derision than applause. The scheme created immense hype when launched by the Congress-led UPA government in 2006 - it was basically show-cased as Sonia Gandhi's ‘gift to the nation'. It was perceived that after the crude, brazenly pro-rich ‘India Shining' policies of the BJP-led NDA regime, the new government will usher in radical reforms for the marginalised , crushed by the onslaught of globalisation and structural adjustment.

The scheme has received flak from several quarters for widespread corruption, lack of efficiency and accountability, cheating the jobless, landless poor, among other reasons. The CAG report for 2006-2007 on NREGA criticised the scheme for its slow progress and lack of accountability. Social audits conducted by civil society groups and individuals across India country have ridiculed the scheme's progress in most states and revealed that funds are systematically being siphoned off while the rural poor live in abject poverty, unemployment and hunger.
However, states with better implementation and public participation have started to deliver the benefits by uplifting the livelihood standards of the rural.

According to the Union ministry of rural development, 12.23 lakh works have been initiated in parts of rural India; but a dismal 1.63 lakh have been completed. The ministry claims that funds in the tune of Rs 24,000 crore have already been spent under NREGA. Reality on the ground seems different.