Rahul: I fathered NREGA; my freebies are better than yours

Rahul Gandhi, now in the thick of campaigning for the Uttar Pradesh elections, believes in giving credit where it is due: to himself. Speaking of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Gandhi scion has now disclosed that this was his contribution. According to The Times of India , Rahul said: “I learnt the biggest need of people is employment near the place one lives. This gave birth to NREGS." Now we know who to blame. The NREGS (or NREGA, when Scheme is replaced by Act in the short form) will cost Rs 40,000 crore this fiscal, but it has run into serious trouble in various states for want of proper planning and funding. Since the time it was launched in 2006-07, it has gobbled up over Rs 1,50,000 crore, and the sum could bloat to Rs 1,70,000 crore by March-end 2012. Clearly, Rahul Gandhi is staking claim to having been instrumental in spending this kind of money on a social security scheme whose results have been debated and contested. We shall come to this point later, but first let us dispose of another point Rahul made in his speech in Gorakhpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh the other day. [caption id=“attachment_208617” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Rahul Gandhi is staking claim to having been instrumental in spending this kind of money on a social security scheme whose results have been debated and contested.”] [/caption] According to him, Mayawati is already wasting his NREGS money, while Samajwadi Party under Mulayam Singh Yadav is planning to do so by promising free electricity if he gets elected. “Now, he claims he will give free electricity if voted to power: where will he get electricity from? From the skies? His Umeed ki Cycle has hopes for goons and other such elements,” The Times quotes Rahul as saying. All this makes for good poll rhetoric, but also for double-speak. Sure, no state government should be promising free power if it cannot afford it, but is Rahul the one entitled to take the high ground of fiscal rectitude? In fact, he himself claimed just the opposite, according to the newspaper. “Take NREGS, the Rs 60,000-crore (farm) loan waiver and now the food security bill — the Congress has done it all.” When the Congress had “done it all”, how does it lie in his mouth to say Mulayam Singh should not be entitled to his pet giveaways? Is Rahul saying that my freebies are good freebies, yours aren’t. In fact, since he made such a big deal of fathering the NREGS, it’s worth recalling the complete legacy of NREGS. The scheme is currently floundering for want of funds and vision, despite a Rs 40,000 crore allocation for it in 2012-13. Even while putting lots of money in the hands of the rural poor (which is where Rahul deserves kudos), NREGS has generated many problems - not least of which is the lack of available work for people demanding it (Read here) . In fact, the scheme had spent only about Rs 20,900 crore till January-end, and is unlikely to use up all its Rs 40,000 crore allocation as the warts area showing everywhere. Workers are not being paid properly (read here) , some are committing suicide because of it (read here) , and the UPA government is still scrapping internally over whether the scheme should pay regular wages or the minimum wages set by states, pitting the PM against Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh (Read here) . For some of our earlier critiques, read this and this and this. Worse, it appears as if the scheme – which promises work near where the worker lives - has made rural people more indolent and unemployable by curbing seasonal migration. Says TH Chowdhary, a former chairman of Videsh Sanchar Nigam Ltd, calls NREGS a “social crime.”  Writing in BusinessLine , he says: “Migration is an historical phenomenon. It can be seasonal, for short periods, or permanent. Any scheme that is designed to contain India’s rural population in the village of their birth itself is a retrograde step. Villages cannot sustain so many unskilled labourers and not-so-literate labour. By creating useless ‘work,’ we are promoting dependency among the unfortunate rural, illiterate and unskilled population. This is, indeed, a social crime.” This view may be debatable, but the short point is this: Rahul Gandhi, having admitted paternity in this folly, is duty bound to fix the problems in it before he throws more good money after bad in fresh pork-barrel schemes. And sure, he has no right to criticise Mulayam Singh for his largesse when he is the largesse-monger-in-chief: Rs 1,70,000 crore on NREGS, Rs 72,000 crore on farm loan waivers (not Rs 60,000 crore as he claimed), and possibly Rs 95,000 crore on Food Security. And we have not even talked about the oil subsidies – on which he has not claimed fatherhood.