Jalan wants EGS put on trial first

Dealing a reality check to UPA’s dream Bill on Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Rajya Sabha MP and former RBI governor Bimal Jalan to...

Dealing a reality check to UPA’s dream Bill on Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Rajya Sabha MP and former RBI governor Bimal Jalan today advised the government not to rush the legislation and put the scheme on trial instead.

Jalan, in his letter to Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, has pointed out that the Bill in its present form was likely to give rise to a ‘‘gargantuan bureaucratic structure which will be overburdened with paperwork’’.

Jalan proposes that since the scheme needs to be tried out at the grassroots soon, the government should come out with a resolution in Parliament, implementing the scheme without enacting a law for at least a year. In its present form, he says, the EGS was bound to fall prey to factors like the multi-tier and multi-agency system, which in the past have clogged the delivery of schemes. He claimed that at least 10 government agencies were involved in the delivery of EGS at the moment.

Jalan, however, welcomed a proposal mooted at the National Advisory Council that the beneficiary should do a ‘‘self-selection’’ in the EGS. But the Bill gives unbridled powers to bureaucrats to identify and select the beneficiary, which would render the scheme purposeless, he says.

For Kolkata, the IMD has forecast mostly cloudy skies with light to moderate rain or thundershowers on most days through Panchami.

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