New Delhi: Asserting the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme was “much exploited” for partisan purposes by Congress-led UPA government, the Centre said on Thursday it intended to go ahead with its reforms, disregarding widespread protests.
This is a day after top economists wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to urge him not to make major changes in its guidelines.
The government said the UPA allowed NREGA “to be exploited for purely partisan purposes”, and a team of “genuine and unbiased individuals” would be tasked to reform it.
“Unless an extremely likely network of interests is not broken, the real picture will not emerge.
Excerpts of CAG reports and critical studies, including those during the UPA regime, are an eye opener. These reports rarely find mention in (rural development ministry) reports,” an official note said.
The ministry note stresses on the need to convert the scheme into “a popular movement aimed at zero- unemployment in villages”.
The government said in spite of clear evidence of rampant corruption at various places, the scheme continues to be presented as a successful scheme.
“This, perhaps is due to a solid network of vested interests involving political party functionaries, government officials, NGOs, research institutes and experts desirous of milking the scheme to their advantage,” the note said.
Arguing that the scheme has earned “quite a bad name”, the note said that under it there was “lack of genuinely demand- driven implementation mechanism (and) non-transparent functional structure”.
The ministry said that being part of a “right-based framework”, the scheme could also be effectively linked with skill development.
The government’s assertion came against the backdrop of objections by Left parties, former rural development minister Jairam Ramesh and some leading economists to any “dilution” of the MNREGA programme which came into force through an act of Parliament in 2005.
