This refers to Sreelatha Menon’s column “A joke called NREGS” (Ear to the Ground, November 18). In his book Swaraj, Arvind Kejriwal notes that siphoning off Central funds by government officials can be tackled by devolving untied funds upon villagers directly. In this context, uninformed and often scheming gram panchayats, usually pulling in different sectarian directions, are already struggling to effectively utilise untied funds available to them. A sudden inflow of large funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) will worsen the situation. If only political and administrative will could be mobilised to ensure near-full implementation of NREGS in a responsive manner, this one scheme could change the lives of a vast number of currently disempowered people of India in a short span of time.
Alok Sarkar Kolkata
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