The slugfest between the centre and the Uttar Pradesh government continues on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee (MNREG) scheme in the state. After Jairam Ramesh’s letter to the UP government last week, Mayawati has accused the rural development minister of playing politics. With the state elections around the corner, Mayawati has rubbished Ramesh's allegations by attributing “political motives” to his letter.
In the present context more significant than usual politics is the huge corruption in the MNREGS implementation. Governance Now was the first to expose the whole issue threadbare in the October 16-31 issue. As part of a Governance Now team, I went to two districts of UP – Kanpur Dehat and Unnao. My colleagues went to Varanasi, Sonbhadra, Kushinagar and Siddharth Nagar. All we found was that there was blatant misuse of the scheme funds, which were meant to provide employment to rural household.
We were amazed at the ingenuity of UP bureaucracy in innovating new ways of making money. Their imaginative skills were at display when we learnt that a 400-metre road cost Rs 7.83 crore in a village, Rs 10 lakh were spent on a 175 metre long, two and half feet wide track, mitti bharai and construction of a boundary wall at government nursery cost Rs 22.33 lakh, a pond cost Rs 2 crore, check dams of Rs 40 lakh, brick guard to protect sapling cost of Rs 6.6 crore ... the list can go on.
We also found out the most expensive hole in the ground, where a soak pit of barely one cubic metre was dug up for a whooping Rs. 1.66 crore. There were glaring gaps between “estimated cost” and “actual expenditure”. Also, the mistakes in feeding data into the management information system (MIS) were evident.
However, all these were lesser crimes compared to the mother of all embezzlement my colleague found – a mythical Taj Mahal to Red Fort road in Sevapuri in Varanasi district – a non-existent road worth Rs 1 crore!
The questions which emerged from our ground visit was: is there any monitor mechanism to investigate all the projects in villages? Who are the people pulling strings behinds the scenes?
As we searched for answers, all we got in reply from lower-rung officials was that all these scams might be computer mistakes. Then, why did not the state government check the data before it showed up on the rural development ministry website?
Some of these questions left us puzzled, more so because last year the Obama administration heaped praises on the innovative social scheme. A briefing of the MNREGS was arranged at the G-20 in Washington in 2010. But nobody knew that in our own backyard, our own officials were letting the scheme down by writing inflated bills, filing wrong MIS entries, diverting funds and embezzling crores straight into pockets.
Unfortunately Mayawati refuses to see it beyond politics. She seems quite oblivious to the fact that growing corruption would end up marginalising only those who are socially and economically depressed. Ironically this social section always looked towards her as saviour. Given the fact that Mayawati has stubbornly looked the other way, there is a strong possibility of this serious issue getting derailed in the centre-versus-state political tussle. Those involved in siphoning off people's money would ultimately have the last laugh.
