RE:Has the Left overplayed its hand?
by sibby mathews on Jul 08, 2008 06:18 PM
Oh no, not so fast.
You mentioned the NREGS. I suppose you might have read a bit about it. Can you tell what exactly you read ? And what was the source ?
The NREGA is an enterprise of the human resource development ministry in association with state governments. It is almost entirely budgeted by the centre and was wrung out of the unwilling hands of the Congress administration by the left (as part of the CMP). As a result, the centre initially marked 200 of the poorer districts of India for coverage and then, under further and relentless pressure from the left, spread it across the entire country.
It would be too elaborate an exercise if I were to go into the full chronology and details of the developments behind this initiative, but if you have read extensively about it, pray tell me whether you did not notice that had it not been for the left, it might not have even been considered at any stage ?
However, as with every poverty eradication or rural development scheme in India, this schmeme too suffers from being affected by that most dominant of our national traits - namely corruption.
The efficacy of every people oriented initiative varies widely across states and varies in consonance with the extent of corruption in those states. Thus, while the NREGS is reported to be the most successful in Kerala (a state that has been named by Transparency Int. the least corrupt in India for several years), the story is entirely different in states like Bihar, U.P.etc
