Worst fears proved true
In 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. Raghuram published a "critical appraisal" of Indian Railways (IR). In the 26-page study, Lalu was eulogised as the greatest business manager since Henry Ford and transformed into a management guru. Now almost a year later after filing a disclosure application under the Right to Information Act, 2005, the Indian Express has discovered that the appraisal study was sponsored by Indian Railways. Raghuram travelled the entire country by air-conditioned first class rail, and by air and was paid Rs.4 lakh for his pains. "A study sponsored by a subject does not necessarily compromise its objectivity," explains the good professor.
Then how come the paeans of personal praise when it’s painfully obvious that IR’s great performance under Lalu is actually a natural consequence of the Indian economy growing at an unprecedented 9 percent plus per year, rather than any great feat of managerial legerdemain? And not a word about how by doubling freight-load weight per wagon, the IR management under Lalu’s stewardship has imposed a dangerous overload on the country’s rail tracks.
That’s critical appraisal IIM-A style!
Tell the children!
One of the most conspicuous acts of omission and commission of post-independence India’s educated middle class (which led the uniquely successful freedom movement) is that it encouraged its children to abjure politics as a vocation. Now there is an overwhelming mountain of evidence which proves beyond all reasonable doubt that thanks to Soviet-inspired Nehruvian socialism, politics is the most lucrative vocation of them all. The most spectacular evidence in support of this proposition is provided by a sworn affidavit in which recently-elected chief minister of Uttar Pradesh (pop.180 million) Mayawati admitted to a personal net worth of Rs.52.5 crore. Three years ago on April 24, 2004 as a candidate for a Lok Sabha election this former government school teacher had declared assets valued at Rs.11 crore, by no means a sum to be sneezed at. But the feat of growing her net worth by 400 percent in three years — ascribed to astute property purchases in Delhi and its environs — has dumbfounded even the country’s most reputed wealth managers.
Quite obviously such huge fortunes cannot be built through small donations from millions of people as Mayawati disingenuously claims. So with the traditional get-rich-quick strategem of auctioning industrial licences hit by the law of diminishing returns following economic liberalisation, acquisition of large tracts of rural land for "public purposes" under the archaic Land Acquisition Act, 1894 from poor farmers for a song, and subsequently exercising discretionary power — a distinguishing characteristic of all post-independence Indian legislation — to denotify large chunks of it in favour of real estate developers, obviously for massive clandestine consideration, is the new get-rich-quick strategy of the political class.
That’s the explanation for the fortunes of even johnny-cum-lately politicians multiplying so rapidly. Teachers, tell the children! They need to know.