The Congress-led UPA government’s ambitious National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which guarantees a minimum of 100 days employment to one adult in every rural household, is all set to be boosted with academic inputs from India’s showpiece seven IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) and seven IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management).
Conceptualised and legislated in 2006, NREGS is the unprecedented socio-economic development initiative of Congress party president Sonia Gandhi to address the chronic problem of widespread rural poverty, malnutrition and deprivation. But two years on inevitably, NREGS (annual outlay: Rs.16,000 crore) is floundering, with charges of corruption being levelled in its implementation.
Therefore in a new initiative which the Congress leadership hopes will translate into a huge electoral bonus in the general election of 2009, IIMs are being roped in to prepare work manuals and quality control guidelines for NREGS. Moreover IITs will provide technical inputs for the scheme. The expectation is that this will evolve into a model for government-academia partnerships for other socio-economic development programmes.
Although there is considerable and rising excitement in academia about this government-academia collaboration, Dr. Rajesh Tandon, co-founder and president of PRIA (Participatory Research in Asia), a Delhi-based NGO working to empower the poor through social mobilisation and awareness, is sceptical. “NREGS is not just about rural employment generation. It is also about power relations in rural India, corruption and asset building. The IITs and IIMs are completely clueless about rural realities. They have no rural roots or rural outreach, nor practical development traditions. What has IIT-Delhi done for Delhi? IIT-Bombay for Mumbai, or IIT-Kanpur for Kanpur, perhaps the dirtiest city in the world? What about doing something for their host cities before they go to villages? These institutions should do what they are supposed to do — teach students, and conduct research in their areas of expertise,” says Tandon, an alumnus of IIM-Calcutta and IIT-Kanpur, and former professor of behavioural sciences at IIM-C.
However, Dr. P.L. Dhar, who heads the Centre for Rural Development and Technology in IIT-Delhi, is more sanguine about government-academia cooperation. He cites the example of the Wardha-based Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Industralisation (MGIRI) which has partnered with the Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC). “The objective of MGIRI is to make the Indian rural industry globally competitive through increased product-ivity, quality and entrepreneurship. It is successfully developing a science and technology hub by networking with about 50 institutions, including IITs, NITs and the Indian Institute of Science,” says Dhar.
This is not the first time that the government has approached academic institutions for assistance. As Tandon points out, the Planning Commission has roped in several institutions for monitoring its various programmes. “For government and academia socio-economic initiatives to become effective,” says Tandon, “the development challenges facing the country should be integrated into the syllabuses of higher education institutions, and the IIMs, IITs and regional NGOs should pool their ideas, skills and systems. That would be the more constructive way forward.”
Quite clearly, in the interests of the country, institutions such as the IITs and IIMs where students receive tuition fee subsidies from the poorest people in the world, need to become involved with socio-economic development initiatives. Therefore the proposal to involve these institutions — professors and students — in tightening up NREGS is a welcome initiative. It could improve their course content and help to place NREGS, whose laudable objectives are being threatened by pernicious bureaucratic corruption, back on the rails.
Kavita Charanji (Delhi)