Gandhi Corruption Scheme

Apropos NREGS, now named after Gandhi, Kumar Ketkar writes in his editorial in Loksatta:

...In 2005, government records claimed to have given jobs to about one lakh people through employment guarantee scheme in Solapur.

It was found that in reality many beneficiaries of the scheme had not been employed anywhere. Thousands of names on the payroll were bogus.

Then, Manisha Varma, the district collector, started taking a public roll-call at the actual work-sites. The labourers (genuine) were clueless as to the identities of the men on the payroll. We (Express Group) exposed this scam.

Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh ordered that public roll-call be stopped. It was an oral order, obviously. When Varma went to police station to lodge complaint against the culprits, police refused to register it.

...Till date it is not known what happened to the probe into the scam.

Welfare schemes invariably lead to corruption. Corruption is inbuilt in them, one can say. Reason? The people who are supposed to benefit are often non-literate, so they don't realise that scam is taking place. Even if they do, they are powerless to stop it. And the people who fund the scheme -- the taxpayers -- do not control execution of the scheme. Tax-payers aren't often aware of the scheme, and the scam. People who execute it -- babus -- don't care. After all, it's not their own money, and they get their cuts.

Therefore the best way to prevent corruption is to avoid welfare schemes. NREGS will live on, mind you. It got Congress votes in the Lok Sabha elections, pundits say. So, to an extent it has succeeded in reaching benefits to the poor. But the price for it is the money lost in corruption. A kind of collateral cost.