Postscript

Worst fears proved trueIn 2005 when it was launched with great fanfare as the most ambitious pro-poor programme in Indian history, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme for which an annual outlay of Rs.40,000-60,000 crore was budgeted to provide a minimum of 100 days of employment at the daily minimum wage of each state (Rs.45-70) to one volunteer member of every rural family, conservative economists despaired. They warned this populist measure would benefit ubiquitous rural intermediaries and India‚s notorious light-fingered petty bureaucracy to a greater extent than the intended beneficiaries. Nevertheless, well-intentioned liberals (including the editors of this publication), accorded the scheme a cautious welcome as an overdue initiative to provide minimal social security to the wretchedly poor, by-passed by the shining India success story. Now two years on and an estimated Rs.100,000 crore down the drain, the indications are that the cynical predictions of critics and worst fears of liberals, have come true. A recent (May-June) impact survey of NREGS conducted by a Delhi-based NGO ‚ Centre for Environment and Food Security (CEFS) ‚ in six most backward districts of the eastern seaboard state of Orissa has prompted the authors of the survey to comment that “there is open loot of the taxpayers‚ money…” The authors of the survey report that during their investigation of the Orissa Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, they found myriad malpractices and that the wages paid ‚ often after delays of four-six months ‚ varied arbitrarily between Rs.22-40 per day.Even as the state and Central governments have maintained a stoic silence about the scandalous disclosures of the CEFS survey, the moral in this tragic tale for Indian liberals is that the ambitious and well-intentioned NREGS needs to be re-designed, restructured and jointly implemented with proven and respected NGOs. The rot has penetrated too deep into post-independence India‚s incorrigible bureaucracy to entertain even the remote possibility of making the proverbial silk purse out of a sow‚s ear. Curious critical appraisal They have a formidable reputation because their graduates are snapped up by eager corporates from around the world at mind-boggling start-up remuneration packages. Nevertheless deep inside, most sentient people harbour mixed feelings about India‚s six showpiece Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). For one, despite their sprawling 100 acres-plus campuses and capital intensive infrastructure heavily funded by taxpayers, between all six of them the IIMs admit barely 1,500 students annually. Competition is deliberately restricted by government making it very difficult for private sector entrepreneurs to promote similarly sized or equipped B-schools. Against the backdrop of growing awareness that the IIMs‚ greatest achievement is to restrict the less than best from entering their over-subsidised campuses, it‚s hardly surprising these government-sponsored institutes are beginning to absorb the worst practices of sarkari babus who have acquired global notoriety for their light-fingered (mis)-governance of this unfortunate republic. A case in point is IIM-Ahmedabad‚s transformation of Union railways minister Lalu Prasad Yadav into an institutional manager par excellence and perhaps the greatest railway minister ever. In September last year IIM-Ahmedabad‚s Prof. G.…