Just as leaky

The National Food for Work programme, launched late last year by the United Progressive Alliance as its signature programme for poverty reduction, appears to suffer from the weaknesses of other such anti-poverty programmes—poor targeting and execution, with delayed payments forcing workers to do distress sale of the grain they get as part wages.

While it is too early to assess the programme’s impact on alleviating rural poverty, this newspaper’s series of reports from Rajasthan shows clear lacunae in the system’s design.

In Udaipur, for instance, it was found that workers hadn’t got paid the cash component of their wages for four to five months; the food component too was arriving late.

And since the food got paid without the money, villagers had to resort to distress sales to be able to pay for their other needs. As a result, the grain for which the government paid Rs 10 per kg and supplied to the workers at the below-poverty-line price of Rs 4.60, was sold by them to grain merchants for Rs 4!

This is only to be expected, given the limited holding capacity of the poor, and the end result is that a hefty subsidy has gone to the wrong person.

If the problems of implementation (paying cash in time) cannot be addressed, then the design itself has to change and cash payments should replace grain.

It was also found that while the programme was designed for everyone in rural areas, the local administration tailored this so as to cover only families below the poverty line.

While this has probably been done to contain costs, it goes against the design of the scheme. The scheme, which essentially involves hard manual labour, was supposed to be self-selecting—that is, the work offered and the wages were so menial, only those below the poverty line would opt for it.

This argument, however, has not been tested in the areas visited, as the scheme is being offered only to the poor.

A problem with such programmes is that the asset creation objective is often not served.

One lot of people our correspondent met was happy to be working on the construction of a dam since it provided money and food, but the dam it was working on wasn’t going to be of any use as it was in the wrong place—indeed, the workers even pointed out where the dam should have been built if it was to store water!

It can only be guessed what visits to other areas might unearth, especially in poorly administered states like Bihar, and how much the intended objective is actually being served.