Half a guarantee

The performance audit (still at draft stage) of the rural employment guarantee programme will convince critics of the programme that they were right all along in questioning the government machinery's ability to carry out such a programme across the country, without major leakages and other shortcomings showing up. However, the rural development ministry bristles at such criticism, argues that the audit has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of the programme, and points to a number of benefits that have resulted from its implementation. Which version you choose to believe depends to some degree on your predilections: the programme's votaries remain convinced that it is doing a lot of good, the critics see it as a boondoggle. Is it possible to arrive at an unbiased verdict on the subject?

Perhaps. It is certainly true that the audit errs in looking at the number of families that got the guaranteed 100 days of work, and measures that against the number of people who applied for and received job cards before declaring that only 3 per cent of the registered families got the guaranteed 100 days of work. As the ministry points out, this is not a target-oriented programme, rather it depends on the demand for work "" so success has to be measured against not job-card holders but those who demanded work (the ratio of the second to the first being about a third). And if it is indeed true, as the draft audit report says, that 20 million families (nearly every tenth family in the country) got an average of 44 days' work under the programme, then it is hard to dismiss the programme as having achieved nothing. More importantly, the ministry relies on secondary signals to gauge the programme's success: an increase in the general wage level in the districts studied, a drop in the migration rate from the areas where the programme operates, an increase in financial savings in the districts concerned, and so on. If these claims are based on reality, then there have been significant benefits to many poor people.

The problem begins when you dig into these broad national numbers, and study the micro-reality, because it is then that the inadequacies of the government machinery show up in all their starkness. In fairness, it would be unreasonable to expect perfect delivery on a programme with a national spread, and involving work at district, block, gram panchayat and village level "" with detailed requirements in terms of the process to be followed: development works to be identified and kept ready, specific programme officers to be appointed, revolving funds to be established, door-to-door surveys to be done to identify potential beneficiaries, and so on. At least in the initial stages, some cutting of procedural corners and some ad hoc decision-making are to be expected. But having conceded this, the fact remains that the audit report makes for depressing reading about the manner in which the government functions. The absence of muster rolls, the number of cases where no lasting or useful assets were created, and the delays in payment of wages and much else give enough cause to ask why the government could not have hastened more slowly, and ensured better preparation before rolling out on a national scale. The outlay under the programme looks set to grow to about 1 per cent of GDP. India is not yet rich enough that money on such a scale can be spent badly.