06-10-2008, 10:52 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->This really is the root of the problem. What development activities are they talking about? Are you getting an assured supply of electricity, without wild fluctuations? Do you get clean water around the clock? Have the potholes in the roads in your town been filled up? Does anyone believe that the local government schools or the primary health centres are functioning adequately? (Or functioning at all!) So where is the money going?
One weak excuse being trotted out is that the funds are being targeted at rural areas, whether in the form of loan waivers or the National Rural Employment Guarantee schemes. This is a joke. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->What of the NREG? Sonia Gandhi's pet ploy to win votes is coming a cropper. On May 14, this year a man named Lalit Kumar Mehta was murdered in Jharkhand. The police tried to pass it off as a case of robbery, but the real facts soon emerged. Lalit Kumar Mehta was an activist in the Vikas Sahyog Kendra, which works for adivasis. At the time of his death, he was carrying out a social audit of the local NREG. scheme, and his father, Jagdish Mehta, insists that he was carrying a CD-ROM with hard proof of misuse of funds.
Please note that this particular social audit was being carried out not by just another unknown non-governmental organisation, but under the direct supervision of Professor Jean Dreze (the Belgian economist associated with Dr Amartya Sen). Media reports confirm the Vikas Sahyog Kendra's suspicions about the daylight robbery passing off as NREG schemes. And this, I am fairly certain, is being replicated all over in India.
Let me sum it up. There is no money for fuel subsidies because it is, supposedly, being used for developmental activities. But nobody can see any effect of these activities. (The highway development schemes started in the days of the Vajpayee ministry, for instance, have practically ground to a halt.) I repeat: Where is the money going?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where is money going?
One weak excuse being trotted out is that the funds are being targeted at rural areas, whether in the form of loan waivers or the National Rural Employment Guarantee schemes. This is a joke. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->What of the NREG? Sonia Gandhi's pet ploy to win votes is coming a cropper. On May 14, this year a man named Lalit Kumar Mehta was murdered in Jharkhand. The police tried to pass it off as a case of robbery, but the real facts soon emerged. Lalit Kumar Mehta was an activist in the Vikas Sahyog Kendra, which works for adivasis. At the time of his death, he was carrying out a social audit of the local NREG. scheme, and his father, Jagdish Mehta, insists that he was carrying a CD-ROM with hard proof of misuse of funds.
Please note that this particular social audit was being carried out not by just another unknown non-governmental organisation, but under the direct supervision of Professor Jean Dreze (the Belgian economist associated with Dr Amartya Sen). Media reports confirm the Vikas Sahyog Kendra's suspicions about the daylight robbery passing off as NREG schemes. And this, I am fairly certain, is being replicated all over in India.
Let me sum it up. There is no money for fuel subsidies because it is, supposedly, being used for developmental activities. But nobody can see any effect of these activities. (The highway development schemes started in the days of the Vajpayee ministry, for instance, have practically ground to a halt.) I repeat: Where is the money going?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Where is money going?