They won't suffer for their defalcation
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
having to lie to people
I am lieing ( is this the correct spelling) to people more than ever before now. In my junior years I had been admonished a lot for lieing and had got over the habit the hard way. Now, again I am having to take to the habit. When I say the truth, people just do not go away. They keep standing there and plead for what is not legally theirs. It is sad, but then I have to take the stance that I will look into the matter when I know very well, that I have already invested more time than is appropriate in the case. But then to enable me to have some time to work, this becomes necessary. I hate it; but cant make those around to understand too.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Negativity at its best
It is not unusual that one feels low. especially one realises that work that is being done is going waste and there is not too much of result to write home about. One feels that in an effort to get things better, one keeps building on the number of enemies and keeps cutting on the number of friends. E Sreedharan, my idol, resigned and now has joined back when his resignation was not accepted. I had scanned the scraps left by the public on the times of india news paper's website and found to my shock that there were indeed some people who was happy that he had stepped down. They even wanted worse to happen to him. and was not satisfied his resignation as he was responsible for "homicide". If people who stay on to serve the Government and the people forgoing what they would have got from the lucrative private entereprises, and then some one is as successful as E Sreedharan is, still he has to hear what one cares to say. despite everything. Indeed if this is what Sreedharan should receive, what would be in store for us lesser mortals when we falter or fall.
One perhaps has to be just professional and not worry too much emotionally,
One perhaps has to be just professional and not worry too much emotionally,
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Woh!
Finally managed to get back the password that was long missing from conscious memory. Look forward to more posts.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Failing a well intended scheme
The National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme is by far the most ambitious programme launched by the Ministry of Rural Development. With an outlay of close to Rs. 10,000 or more for every family in rural areas, the amount of money being pumped in through the scheme is very high. The kind of preparation that has gone into developing systems to effectively implement such a scheme however is very inadequate; not just to prevent corruption, but to take the scheme anywhere near the intended beneficiaries!
The scheme basically guarantees employment to the unskilled rural labour. This is the point of emphasis. The crux of the scheme is to convey to the rural labour that they will be given employment opportunity for at least 100 days in a year for the whole family. These 100 days are there for the taking whenever the family pleases. It is in this communication that the scheme has not succeeded.
The local politician and the public do not subscribe to this thought process. For them the scheme is basically the physical infrastructure it builds - be it a talaab, kuva or whatever. The public know of the scheme as individual beneficiaries of the infrastructure that is being built under the scheme- ie, the scheme is one in which they get a kapil dhara kuva for themselves, not one which gives mazdoori to the villagers, be it rain or shine.
Why this is a critical fault is as follows. Since the whole concentration is on the physical work as such and not on the element of giving employment opportunity, it is always easier to get the work done using machines and claim the amount for the work done. Well, if you are thinking about how the muster roll entries are going to be done if the machines are going to do the work, there are many ways out.
One way is that there is no entry made at all! These would be evident in a few months time when the MIS data entry is done. No record is maintained. The money is just being siphoned out. By the time there is a hue and cry, it will all be too late. If there is an insistence on record maintenance, these machines can act as proxy for those job card holders who do not care to come for work at the prevailing wage rate. Their jobcards are reported, but not distributed. They are there with the gram panchayat to be manipulated at any point in time. Still worse, the muster rolls are being filled with random job card numbers. Would it not lead to a probability of the same person shown as working at two different spots at the same time? Yes it would. Given that multiple agencies are at work like the WRD, RES and the gram panchayat. It won't be till the MIS data entry is done that this mishap is going to be evident.
The guideline makers would be quick to point out that there is an employment register maintained at the Gram Panchayat level which should ideally prevent such duplication. Yes, ideally it should. But in practice it does not. One reason is that the record at the Gram Panchayat level is not maintained to precision. Then, there is the practice of sanctioning huge works from the district level, done by agencies like the RES, WRD and NGOs. They run parallel to the works done by the gram panchayat with no coordination what so ever, thereby resulting in definite double counting. There are directions that line agencies should start work only on a work order from the Programme Officer at the Janpad level. But then this again is a matter of direction not being enforced!
The MIS data entry is one key deterrent against the scheme going foul. Though the expenditure is being done at full speed in the district, the MIS data entry is lagging behind. When the whole of the data is fed into the software, multiple inconsistencies are sure to be reported. At the district level, the information about ongoing and shelf of projects is not being maintained. At all levels statistics is preferred to information. The reports from the blocks are always of the nature that a hundred Kapil dharas have been sanctioned. The exact locations of these sanctions and beneficiaries are unknown at the district level. How does this affect the system? The wells get dug first by machine and then they are included in the shelf of projects. Thereby, during the act of digging there is nothing illegal. If caught, the well is a private well being dug by a JCB; and if not caught it gets accounted in the name of labourers.
There is a guideline that the payments to the labour should be given on a day with sufficient prior advertisement. This direction is again not followed. There is a direction that the labour payments be made through bank accounts. This is in consonance with the RBI effort for hundred percent financial inclusion. This is again not done and the men at helm themselves seem to be averse to such an effort just before the election. On record he fears if there will be delay in payments to the labourer; but off the record, there is no surety that the payment is happening through the Gram Panchayat now. In fact there are multiple complaints of payments not happening on time. Plus such an arrangement would mean that the payment to the election needy would be considerably hampered!
The physical work is what the local politicians are all behind. They want a talaab sanctioned and so do they want puliyas and stop dams. No worry if they do not conform to the 60:40 unskilled labour to material ratio. The Engineers are always kind enough to certify that all pucca structures can be built with 60% unskilled labour. Well, this is not the only way they fool the system! The most typical effort in this direction is over estimation. Estimates are sanctioned for five lakhs when they know fully well that the work can be done for three lakhs; and what is worse, the work gets done with even less and the talaab just gives way when the water refuses to be bribed. So what, even when there is a clear report and a confession, the engineer involved is still in place and the Sarpanch who even added on to his crime profile by employing child labour in the cover up act is given protection.
In an exasperation to spend, money gets thrown around in such a fashion that it is impossible for the real beneficiaries to be benefited. The psychology on demonstration is that if the spending is done, somewhere or the other some benefit will accrue to the intended beneficiaries. This could be accepted as an argument had it not been a façade for deliberate mismanagement to suit ulterior designs!
The scheme basically guarantees employment to the unskilled rural labour. This is the point of emphasis. The crux of the scheme is to convey to the rural labour that they will be given employment opportunity for at least 100 days in a year for the whole family. These 100 days are there for the taking whenever the family pleases. It is in this communication that the scheme has not succeeded.
The local politician and the public do not subscribe to this thought process. For them the scheme is basically the physical infrastructure it builds - be it a talaab, kuva or whatever. The public know of the scheme as individual beneficiaries of the infrastructure that is being built under the scheme- ie, the scheme is one in which they get a kapil dhara kuva for themselves, not one which gives mazdoori to the villagers, be it rain or shine.
Why this is a critical fault is as follows. Since the whole concentration is on the physical work as such and not on the element of giving employment opportunity, it is always easier to get the work done using machines and claim the amount for the work done. Well, if you are thinking about how the muster roll entries are going to be done if the machines are going to do the work, there are many ways out.
One way is that there is no entry made at all! These would be evident in a few months time when the MIS data entry is done. No record is maintained. The money is just being siphoned out. By the time there is a hue and cry, it will all be too late. If there is an insistence on record maintenance, these machines can act as proxy for those job card holders who do not care to come for work at the prevailing wage rate. Their jobcards are reported, but not distributed. They are there with the gram panchayat to be manipulated at any point in time. Still worse, the muster rolls are being filled with random job card numbers. Would it not lead to a probability of the same person shown as working at two different spots at the same time? Yes it would. Given that multiple agencies are at work like the WRD, RES and the gram panchayat. It won't be till the MIS data entry is done that this mishap is going to be evident.
The guideline makers would be quick to point out that there is an employment register maintained at the Gram Panchayat level which should ideally prevent such duplication. Yes, ideally it should. But in practice it does not. One reason is that the record at the Gram Panchayat level is not maintained to precision. Then, there is the practice of sanctioning huge works from the district level, done by agencies like the RES, WRD and NGOs. They run parallel to the works done by the gram panchayat with no coordination what so ever, thereby resulting in definite double counting. There are directions that line agencies should start work only on a work order from the Programme Officer at the Janpad level. But then this again is a matter of direction not being enforced!
The MIS data entry is one key deterrent against the scheme going foul. Though the expenditure is being done at full speed in the district, the MIS data entry is lagging behind. When the whole of the data is fed into the software, multiple inconsistencies are sure to be reported. At the district level, the information about ongoing and shelf of projects is not being maintained. At all levels statistics is preferred to information. The reports from the blocks are always of the nature that a hundred Kapil dharas have been sanctioned. The exact locations of these sanctions and beneficiaries are unknown at the district level. How does this affect the system? The wells get dug first by machine and then they are included in the shelf of projects. Thereby, during the act of digging there is nothing illegal. If caught, the well is a private well being dug by a JCB; and if not caught it gets accounted in the name of labourers.
There is a guideline that the payments to the labour should be given on a day with sufficient prior advertisement. This direction is again not followed. There is a direction that the labour payments be made through bank accounts. This is in consonance with the RBI effort for hundred percent financial inclusion. This is again not done and the men at helm themselves seem to be averse to such an effort just before the election. On record he fears if there will be delay in payments to the labourer; but off the record, there is no surety that the payment is happening through the Gram Panchayat now. In fact there are multiple complaints of payments not happening on time. Plus such an arrangement would mean that the payment to the election needy would be considerably hampered!
The physical work is what the local politicians are all behind. They want a talaab sanctioned and so do they want puliyas and stop dams. No worry if they do not conform to the 60:40 unskilled labour to material ratio. The Engineers are always kind enough to certify that all pucca structures can be built with 60% unskilled labour. Well, this is not the only way they fool the system! The most typical effort in this direction is over estimation. Estimates are sanctioned for five lakhs when they know fully well that the work can be done for three lakhs; and what is worse, the work gets done with even less and the talaab just gives way when the water refuses to be bribed. So what, even when there is a clear report and a confession, the engineer involved is still in place and the Sarpanch who even added on to his crime profile by employing child labour in the cover up act is given protection.
In an exasperation to spend, money gets thrown around in such a fashion that it is impossible for the real beneficiaries to be benefited. The psychology on demonstration is that if the spending is done, somewhere or the other some benefit will accrue to the intended beneficiaries. This could be accepted as an argument had it not been a façade for deliberate mismanagement to suit ulterior designs!
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Contributions to communal harmony
Well yet another case when my boss is putting one language on the paper and is actually on hot pursuit with another agenda. The Jama masjid here wanted to do some renovation work. The old masjid hall was brought down and new construction was to be done along with a basement. The police and the nagarpalika objected to the covered basement which was supposed to be housing a madrasa. Now with the excavation done and the construction half way through, the denial of permission was a financially difficult proposition for the local committee.
Now the denial of permission by the police to a madrasa in a closed basement can be understood in the context of the situation we are as a nation with all the talk about terrorism based on religion. The committee now has reworked the proposal for an open basement meant for parking. The police now changed their opinion and said that an open basement is ok. Quite a logical response to my mind. Now the nagarpalika persisted with the objection and refused to consider the new proposal and said that permission can be given only when the basement is demolished
Now such a fear to basement has not been shown in the case of two other cases, one for an electrical shop and one for a temple and has been overlooked in many other cases. So to cloth their objection based on other reasons, the Collector sends a DO saying that there seems to be some encroachment by Jama masjid which needs to be removed. The report of the RI says there is encroachment to the tune of 800 square feet despite the measurements being taken correctly in the presence of a well meaning officer of the Indian Administrative Service. Since there was no new construction on the site, he arrived at the conclusion that there doesnot seem to be any encroachment. The Collector was open in his criticism of the biased way in which his junior counterpart had prepared the report.
The twist in this engineered encroachment which was first reported by none other than the Collector was the conversions used by the RI. Since the measurement was done in the presence of the senior officer he could not do much damage with the measurement part. So he converted hectares to square feet with a formula that did not exist. Again the area of the quadrilateral that formed the plot was calculated using a technique unknown till now thus engineering the encroachment.
Now the matter again rests on the illogical objection raised by the nagarpalika! This is one way we are antagonising the minority community in our nation compelling them to take to attitudes non conducive to harmonious coexistence!
Now the denial of permission by the police to a madrasa in a closed basement can be understood in the context of the situation we are as a nation with all the talk about terrorism based on religion. The committee now has reworked the proposal for an open basement meant for parking. The police now changed their opinion and said that an open basement is ok. Quite a logical response to my mind. Now the nagarpalika persisted with the objection and refused to consider the new proposal and said that permission can be given only when the basement is demolished
Now such a fear to basement has not been shown in the case of two other cases, one for an electrical shop and one for a temple and has been overlooked in many other cases. So to cloth their objection based on other reasons, the Collector sends a DO saying that there seems to be some encroachment by Jama masjid which needs to be removed. The report of the RI says there is encroachment to the tune of 800 square feet despite the measurements being taken correctly in the presence of a well meaning officer of the Indian Administrative Service. Since there was no new construction on the site, he arrived at the conclusion that there doesnot seem to be any encroachment. The Collector was open in his criticism of the biased way in which his junior counterpart had prepared the report.
The twist in this engineered encroachment which was first reported by none other than the Collector was the conversions used by the RI. Since the measurement was done in the presence of the senior officer he could not do much damage with the measurement part. So he converted hectares to square feet with a formula that did not exist. Again the area of the quadrilateral that formed the plot was calculated using a technique unknown till now thus engineering the encroachment.
Now the matter again rests on the illogical objection raised by the nagarpalika! This is one way we are antagonising the minority community in our nation compelling them to take to attitudes non conducive to harmonious coexistence!
Saturday, November 10, 2007
A poor BPL criterion
The way we look at poverty in our nation is interesting. We keep looking at the figures of the below poverty line population without perhaps realising the factors that get incorporated into these figures at the ground level. To suggest an example, the most recent way of finding out if a family in rural india is poor or not (BPL or not) is based on an asset based survey. So what are the questions like? Do you have a private toilet? If yes it gives your family four marks. But then, you forced me to have a toilet in the Samagra swachta abhiyan with all that talk about nirmal gaon. That is besides the point. Do your kids go to school? Yes. And that too without going for child labour. Yes. Good, four more marks. But then it was the Sarv shiksha abhiyan and all that talk of "school chale hum". That is besides the point. Such 13 questions ( the others arguably more sensible) and you have to be less than 14 marks to be a BPL family in rural India. So how come we have all those kids in the school and all those nirmal gaons and still so many BPL. It is the surveyor's ability to fudge that keeps these families from stopping their children going to school and razing down their toilets. The "assets" include such basic assets that it is downright unkind to link food security to the kid going to school, not going to school that is.
Well, with the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme there is an opportunity. In Madhya Pradesh at least, the cards have been made for all families and the attendance on these cards is a good indicator of how much value the family has for Rs 67/- per day against manual labour for an adult member. There are families where there is not even a single day's labour entry, as Rs 67/- per day is not of enough value to force an adult member to work for a whole day. Or else it might be due to his or her being engaged in something more remunerative that the opportunity cost of working in NREG renders it unattractive. A suggestion is to base the BPL line on the number of mandays rendered in the NREG scheme. Now that the scheme is to be extended to all the districts in the country, it can offer uniformity as well. Not that the muster roll entries cannot be fudged to show working against a particular family's card when the work is actually being performed by a JCB machine. But then fudging is being done in the present BPL survey too in a big scale. It might be possible that some families are fully comprised of infirm people who just cant work under NREG. They could be taken up as a special case with proper medical certification. These families would any way be forgoing around 6700 rupees ( more or less in other states) per year because of their non participation in NREG and it is all the more reason why their medical problem has to be taken care of in a more focussed manner. The verification of this exception would be much easier.
Well, with the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme there is an opportunity. In Madhya Pradesh at least, the cards have been made for all families and the attendance on these cards is a good indicator of how much value the family has for Rs 67/- per day against manual labour for an adult member. There are families where there is not even a single day's labour entry, as Rs 67/- per day is not of enough value to force an adult member to work for a whole day. Or else it might be due to his or her being engaged in something more remunerative that the opportunity cost of working in NREG renders it unattractive. A suggestion is to base the BPL line on the number of mandays rendered in the NREG scheme. Now that the scheme is to be extended to all the districts in the country, it can offer uniformity as well. Not that the muster roll entries cannot be fudged to show working against a particular family's card when the work is actually being performed by a JCB machine. But then fudging is being done in the present BPL survey too in a big scale. It might be possible that some families are fully comprised of infirm people who just cant work under NREG. They could be taken up as a special case with proper medical certification. These families would any way be forgoing around 6700 rupees ( more or less in other states) per year because of their non participation in NREG and it is all the more reason why their medical problem has to be taken care of in a more focussed manner. The verification of this exception would be much easier.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)