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| India job scheme 'disappointing' |
| India's most ambitious scheme ever to lift people out of poverty has met with largely disappointing results in its first year, studies suggest.
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| INDIA
, 27-September-2007
0:36:39 AM |
| The $2.2bn scheme, which was launched by the Congress-led government in 200 districts, guarantees 100 days of work a year for every rural home.
It has been described as India's New Deal for the poor in a country where 70% of its people live in villages.
Critics say the scheme squanders public money and builds wasteful assets.
The National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme was launched in February last year to provide employment to millions of people in India's poorest villages to work on building local infrastructure like village roads, small dams, ponds and buildings.
Uneven progress
Supporters of the scheme insist that it is essential to bridge the growing gap between the rich and poor in developing India.
Critics counter that it is a mere retread of similar programmes in the past which have been plagued by corruption and lack of direction.
The report card of the first year of the scheme - April 2006 to April 2007- culled from various parts of the country seems to be largely uneven, though there are some bright points
"Judging from available reports, the scheme is not doing particularly well, whether we look at the levels of employment generation, or wage rates, or the extent of corruption, or the quality of assets generated," says leading economist Jean Dreze, who is also a member of the employment guarantee scheme council.
The government spent nearly $2,250m in generating nearly one billion days of work for the people of the poorest 200 districts in India where it has been implemented, according to government data available.
This is substantially lower than a target of generating more than two billion days of work during the same period.
Studies in Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous state, found that the rural people in many areas were ignorant of the scheme because they had not been informed by the officials.
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