His focus, he said, would be a successful rollout of the national rural livelihood mission (NRLM), a restructured form of rural development ministry’s Swarnjayanti Grameen Swarojgar Yojna (SGSY) and an effective implementation of the rural development ministry’s schemes in the left wing extremism (LWE) affected regions.

No doubt, NRLM, with stated objective to reach out to rural poor families and link them to sustainable livelihood opportunities, has huge potential in terms of poverty reduction.

It is also uncontested that the LWE affected districts need every penny spent through myriad of rural development schemes. 

What however is conspicuous by its absence in the Ramesh’s scheme of things is NREGA, his ministry’s pet project during first tenure of the UPA.

Various state governments’ pressure on the centre to suspend the rural employment schemes during the farming season (shortage of hands during this season sighted as the reason behind this demand) combined with the growing suspicions on the effectiveness of the scheme (on an average the scheme has been able to provide as low 47 days of work as against 100 days to the workers), only strengthens the case against the scheme that was once was considered an effective tool to rural empowerment.

While the scheme cannot die a premature death as it is enforced by an act of parliament, the lack of interest from the central government in its effective implementation would be as good a spelling its demise. 

Already, the likes of CP Joshi and Vilashrao Deskmukh, former rural development ministers, by the dint of their sheer indifference to the growling corruption in the scheme, have let thousands of crores down the drain.

The elevation of charismatic Jairam Ramesh, however, was expected to give NREGA the boost it required. His recent pronouncements belie that expectation though. While he has acknowledged that the scheme needs an effective audit mechanism, he has not come out with a road-map for its future. 

One hopes Mr Ramesh still has the sense to make NREGA his first priority instead of placing it on an auto-pilot mode.