Make schemes effective
The negativity and alarm being spread about the Food Security Bill and earlier the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act may be understandable given the huge corruption that eats into their efficacy, and the resultant leakage of crores of rupees. They are being used as bogeys adding to the fiscal deficit.
But the answer doesn’t lie in shredding these schemes but in finding ways to make them work better, and this after governments over the years beggarised a huge section of the population with faulty economic policies.
Even the Land Reforms Bill is being pilloried as anti-industry and anti-development. Whose development? Most of the massive, sprawling industrial belts across the country have come up on the lands of people who were thrown out like old pairs of shoes and not given any compensation or dignified rehabilitation.
The government has itself to blame for these attacks as it has completely failed to tackle the critical issue of corruption that has led to wasteful expenditure. Even NREGA could have been productive and added to our infrastructure and the government’s revenues if implemented creatively. To assuage the heartburn of critics, perhaps Mrs Sonia Gandhi should urge the government to appoint a full-time “barefoot minister”, to work without red beacon lights and other trappings, as suggested by former RBI governor Bimal Jalan, to interact with ordinary citizens to monitor how effectively these schemes are being implemented.
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