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And then it was morning…When dreams had to be interrupted

PS: This slide stream’s purpose was/is to highlight the utter state of disarray of my room and not my photography skills, which btw is par excellence(insert emoticon for sarcasm here :$)

Mother of all clichés. Seems like it was just yesterday when we were young. Seems like it was just yesterday when we walked along the tree lined road adjoining that famed busy road. Seems like it was just yesterday when we spoke all night of things – some inane and many profound. Seems like it was just yesterday when we jumped in eclectic happiness. Seems like it was just yesterday …It has been four years now. Here’s looking at you…for a lifetime more.

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is a landmark scheme in many ways. With a budget outlay of 39,000 Crore in the current budget(2009-10) there is an increased attention towards this scheme and its efficacy in improving quality of rural life.

The scheme has not been without its fair share of detractors. For a larger period, there were questions being raised about leakages in the system to the potential of the programme to be rolled out in such a large scale in all districts across the country. Today, we have moved beyond such questions and we are questioning the nature of works being adopted and whether the assets being created are of a permanent nature and whether the state should be spending huge amounts on this scheme without any tangible long standing assets being created and whether investments are being made in improving the skillset of the beneficiaries which would help them in the longer run. A set of academicians have argued that in the light of non permanency of the assets being created under this scheme, this is nothing but a cash transfer scheme which in the lack of an unique identity scheme can not materialize.[1]

Another issue that the program has to grapple with is the non-uniformity of implementation across different states. Some states like Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu have taken the lead in implementation, whereas other states are still being seen as laggards. What is needed is a national oversight team, under the ministry of labour or ministry of rural development that can identify the best practices across states and disseminate this information.

Issues of lack of awareness amongst beneficiaries, inadequate trained engineering staff to monitor the nature of works being undertaken, inadequacies in staff at the panchayat and taluk levels to provide for the administrative back bone of this scheme – resulting in delayed job cards delivery, delay in processing applications and eventually payments are complaints that have for long plagued the scheme.

On another front, what the NREGA has silently achieved through its payment mechanisms is a larger inclusion of the rural poor into mainstream banking, a move which hitherto was not considered easy. The scheme also scores on transparency measures that are being inbuilt into the program. The MIS systems provided on the program website are fairly comprehensive and ensures information symmetry amongst several stakeholders.

At our visits to gram panchayats in the Kolar district we found that all the problems that we have mentioned about the program still continue to exist. Awareness in several quadrants about this scheme was low, nature of works being adopted appeared ad-hoc and without sound reasoning of long term value being generated and there did exist complaints of delayed payments and procedural delays. However, working silently were people like the secretary of Shivarapatna Panchayat(Malur Taluk), who were working in their own silent ways to ensure that things improved on the implementation front. We commend this indomitable spirit of ground level workers to bring in a transformation at their own level.

At this stage, what is required is critical evaluation of nature of works being undertaken, the ground level issues that hamper the streamlined work delivery and a greater emphasis on parallel up-gradation of beneficiaries’ skill levels.

[1] http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/nrega-vs-nilekani/363493/

Conclusion of “Implementation issues with NREGA” – A submission for “Managing Government Studies” course – Term IV

YST goes down…

This post is an extremely Me-Me-Only post. While some might argue that this blog has always been an exercise in vanity, I still maintain that at several different stages, this blog has served several different purposes.

Take I – Handwriting. Inspired by post at Austere’s, here is a bad resolution photograph of a page from my class notes from a subject called “Managing Government Studies”

Take II – This one is an embedded video from NDTV.com. and as Selukar says, in a sense we shared screen space with Pranab Da himself and I personally feel youths is not the right usage. But maybe I am wrong.

http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1132742

Take III – This one is for the love of Bangalore, from Times of India. Thanks Darinia. At some levels its a lament on the city, at another level a trip down nostalgia lane or maybe just that I am a glutton.

In the absence of a thumbnail preview. Please feel free to click http://tinyurl.com/m6khr9

End of Narcissistic Content. Regular programming shall continue soon.

Have you seen one of those news items on television, which appear annually once with undying regularity – Premium Institutes of Management (replace Premium with Indian if you want) and their fee hikes and how banks are waiting to ensure loans are disbursed. Crap. The loss of respect I have had to endure to ensure release of some amount as a loan has left me really miffed at this whole exercise. Finally, I think I will have to pay from my pocket.

And then there are institute aids… A JOKE!

Written by Mahasweta Devi at the heart of the naxalite movement in West Bengal(somewhere in the late 70s). Read the English translation by Samik Bandopadhyaya . I have never read a HindiBengali translation, but this one was totally in a different league.

Spanning a day in the life of a Bengali mother, it traces her reconstruction of her son’s life and the revolution he had been a part of an died for. Anything that I write here can not substitute for what you would go through as you share Sujata’s journey – a journey in which she goes through her own life and of the life that she had planned for her son and more importantly to piece through facets of her son’s life that her son had so effectively hidden from her.

Along the narrative, the author stays clear of glorifying the revolution and yet at the same time questions the right of society to be dismissive of these young men and women.

Do this. Buy yourself this book.(Not available in most of the crosswords and Oddysseys of the world – atleast not in Hyderabad, I got mine ordering it online from http://indiaplaza.in). I promise you, it will get you thinking.

Thanks Austere(http://austereseeker.blogspot.com) for introducing me to Mahasweta Devi through a blog post.

PS: There also is a movie by the same name by Govind Nihalani starring Jaya Bachhan and Nandita Das amongst others. Read that it had received quite some crititcal acclaim as well.

Children are funny things…they laugh in mirth at others’ tears

I buried my face in the sun warmed hedge and smelled the flowers and pain…

This is a test post. Posting from Windows Live Writely to evaluate how it fares. Regular programming will continue shortly.