South Asian Business news and information

BBC reports:

India's Rural Development Ministry says in the past year more than 30 million rural households were given employment and on Tuesday, it was extended to cover the entire country.

But critics say that the scheme has been a failure in many of India's poorest states and has only succeeded in the country's better off states such as Gujarat.

They describe it is a colossal waste of public funds.

Over the next year, the government has set aside $4bn to pay for the scheme.

Launched in 2006, the scheme covered 200 Indian districts. From this year, it will bring in all the 530 districts of India. The annual spending for this scheme in 2006-2007 was Rs. 11300 crores (1crore = 10 million).

Since its inception, the project faced severe criticism. The major allegation was that the project was created based on previous poverty eradication projects that failed. After the implementation, it was found out that in most of the districts the project did not work very well.

Now, many people are saying that this is another PR stunt of the Congress led coalition government. Since the election is ahead of them, they want to revive their popularity among the people. Stunt or not, the truth is poverty is still wide spread in India and it is increasing. The main challenge with these type of projects is to make sure that the money reaches the poor. If Indian government implements this project, I think, they should emphasize on the proper spending of the funds and punish the people who misuse them. 

If you want to know more about the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGA), you can visit the following links:

http://www.nrega.nic.in/ (NREGA official website)

Wikipedia

Articles published on NREGA on various blogs and news websites

Rediff

Deesha.org

The Hindu

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BBC