I am in a mood for celebration. This should also sound like a congratulatory pat on my own back:
On May 18th I wrote on my blog,
“This proposed shifting of Mr Ahluwalia from the Planning Commission to the Ministry of Finance is a retrograde step and is the death knell for the progressive measures of the earlier UPA regime, particularly the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. Mr Ahluwalia cannot see beyond the tip of his nose and he is bound to mark the scheme down merely as a subsidy. The next step will be to abolish it, at the first sign of any requirement of belt tightening.”
And on May 19th, I read the following in an opinion piece by Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu :
“Having resisted the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme when activists first mooted the idea in 2004, the Congress took it up seriously only after the Left parties made it a priority. Even then, conservative elements within the ruling establishment like Montek Singh Ahluwalia of the Planning Commission remained sceptical and sought to limit the Central government’s fiscal commitment to it. Only when the economic slowdown hit India in 2008 — and the importance of NREGA as both a politically convenient safety net for the poor and an accelerator-multiplier to kickstart the economy became apparent — did the Congress make its implementation a priority.”
Well, I sort of foretold what the so-called expert analysts and media pundits, at least one of them, will say. There is almost a word-to-word correspondence between what I said and what Mr Varadarajan said. He referred to the past positions and actions of Mr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia whereas I boldly projected the past onto the future and predicted what it holds for NREGS should Mr Ahluwalia become the finance minister. The only substantial difference (though not substantive) is he got paid for what he wrote and I did not for my piece!
Pity me.
What started out as a celebration ended up as a lamentation. Do you have in mind any appropriate smiley for this?
Raghuram Ekambaram
2 comments:
Dear Raghu, have no fear about continuation of NREGA, Montek ( or an elitist like Aditi Ray's views)not withstanding.
I think you missed my blog on manifestos in Sulekha, Congress Manifesto promised that the 'family' approach for NREGA will be substituted by 'person' approach, so as many people in a family that wishes to take benefit, can do so, without a cap as now, and that too at a 'real' wage of Rs 100 per day, no link with minimum wage any more......so if there is inflation, the nominal wage to be paid per person will also automatically go up.
So, Jai ho. Decidedly. A 'family' of 10 any day will be better off than a family of 4 for taking NREGA benefits (including unemployment dole)... so, multiply at will whether or not you can afford it, and continue voting for the hand that feeds,literally.
And you know what!! The savvy-JNU brand advisors now think that a similar 'urban' employment guarantee scheme is in order. Todays papers say so.
Dear Aditi, I do visit your space on Sulekha off and on and did read the piece you referred. We are at the opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue as I recall the vigorous discussion we had earlier. But when the "family" to "personal" shift came about, I was not too thrilled because it gives rise to adverse selection. On this I am with you. But, this cannot become an "in principle" opposition, as the matter is in the domain of mechanics.
But, think on the other side. The business lobby was gung ho for MSA. Why? Because they expect "freebies" from him as FM. Can you even begin to justify this "irrational exuberance" (Greenspan's words) of the market in terms other than the expected bonanza from the next FM, thankfully not MSA? That means the other side should suffer. So, there are two sides to the coin.
Raghuram Ekambaram
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