Schematic scope

Significantly,the NREGS which creates public goods without calling for special skills conceptualises its projects locally. This is aimed at ensuring local decision-making,community participation and efficient utilisation of resources. In other words,each village articulates its peculiar needs and sets out to meet them,mitigating to a great extent the drawbacks of top-down Central or state-level determined schemes that usually misread local conditions. The NREGS has,however,been performing below its potential and public health in India has,till recently,concerned almost wholly subsidised treatment rather than prevention of disease. So,

interlinking NREGS works with the TSC is an important step.

However,the rural sanitation project,linked with the NREGS,should also evolve into a holistic rural health programme. An inventory of necessary public goods for better rural health would include not just covered pit latrines but also clean drinking water,scientific and functioning garbage disposal,drainage and sewerage systems and eradication of pests. Moreover,since the NREGS already involves grassroots decision-making,the interlinking would help generate awareness about hygiene and sanitation. This will be an integrated,but locally nuanced,approach to asset creation and maintenance that will provide for rural Indias foremost socio-economic imperatives: employment and public health.