Last year the Comptroller and Auditor General of India report brought out various discrepancies in the NREGA flagship scheme of central government, (read more about it in EPW, India development blog). Instead of working on those, this year the Union Government extended the scheme to almost all the districts in the country with huge fund (some 6000 crores).
Let us see a very different issue, Financial Inclusion. Last year RBI asked SLBC convener banks of every state to make at least one district 100% financially included. Read this to find out the results of one such drive. I was involved in one of the studies on Financial inclusion in northern states of India. Bankers running around for numbers was sight to sigh.
Well I am trying to enlist few issues which are often over-looked by the government while deciding on a program -
- Is this program equitably scalable in all parts of country? sub question - how it differs?
- What is the basis of this program (has there been enough brainstorming over the rationale)? Is this solving a problem or just addressing a symptom?
- How effective implementation will be insured? Are we putting extra burden on resources? Is the program affecting other ongoing scheme? (SGSY vs SHG Bank Linkage dilemma)
- Is the program creating a rift in community? (reservation schemes intoxicating society without much benefit)
- How can we ensure that awareness of benefits reaches the targets?
5 comments:
I worry about our tendency on this blog to more often celebrate government failure and failure in general, than be pragmatic and look at directions where IFMR (and its partners) may go / contribute as an action-research institute. I want to share two thoughts with the readers:
1. CMF has done some work in asking if there are important interaction effects between schemes of the Government and financial inclusion -- they find that in Karimnagar District this has been an enormously positive fall-out of the NREGA. Just as the Tamil Nadu mid-day meal scheme of many decades ago is credited with fall in the crude birth rate (since girls went to school for a few more years), financial inclusion may well be the principal, even if unintended, long-term benefit of the NREGA scheme.
2. One direction that ICICI Foundation has taken is to try and make a concerted effort to strengthen the Civil Society movement overall in India working through its partner www.csopartners.org. The thought is that if we can get a lot more focussed, vibrant and activist Civil Society (including Gram Panchayats) the Government and Markets will be forced to pay attention to issues of equity and human development much more than they might be inclinded to do on their own. CSO Partners and CDF at IFMR will be working closely together on many joint projects -- one "The Open NGO Platform" is already under way.
Certainly the better way to look at failures is to think of various issues where we can contribute as an action research institute.
Though the blog definitely criticizes government's approaches. Any scheme must fulfill its basic purpose, we can not be lucky every time to have a unintended long term benefit.
I visited Dindori, a tribal district of Madhya Pradesh recently. One reason, women did not go to bank was fear of bank officers. They do not talk nicely and scold often. I worry how much a bank employee would succeed in this situation when he goes there to open no-frills account and how much that no-frill account will be used(given they are closed society).
NREGA and the Death of Tapas Soren, full article (PDF).
thanks for the article Manu
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