So far so good. Now a survey conducted in Orissa’s six poorest districts has revealed that out of this Rs 733 crore spent under NREGA , more than Rs 500 crore has been siphoned and misappropriated by government officials. This survey was conducted by a centre I am associated with, the Delhi-based Centre for Environment and Food Security. It surveyed 100 villages in the six districts of Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput region. They were Bolangir, Nuapada, Kalahandi, Koraput, Nabarangpur and Rayagada.

The Government of Orissa claims that it provided 7.99 crore man-days of employment to 13,94,169 households during 2006-7. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that less than 2 crore man-days of employment has been provided on the ground and more than 6 crore man-days of employment has been accounted for only on the pages of false job cards and fabricated muster rolls.

As per the claims of the Orissa government, every needy and

demanding family in the state was given an average of 57 days of wage employment during 2006-7 and not a single needy and demanding household was denied wage employment in the 19 NREGA districts of Orissa. The CEFS survey, however, has revealed that actually not more than five days of average employment has been given to each of the needy families in 19 NREGA districts of the state and large number of such families were denied employment.

We found that the current level of hunger, poverty and deprivation in Orissa’s KBK region is as deep, demeaning and dehumanising as it ever was, despite the so-called successful implementation of NREGA. We could not find a single family in the 100 sample villages who had actually got 100 days of wage employment. We found very few families who had got 40-60 days of wage employment. The rest of the families managed mostly between 5 to 21 days, if at all. However, online job cards of most of these households have false wage entries. It was in this way that Orissa was shown to have “successfully” spent Rs.733 crore and provided about 8 crore man-days of employment.

It is impossible to believe that this open loot can be organised without the active connivance of the state machinery. The NREGA has various inbuilt vigilance mechanisms and it is not possible to perpetrate this enormous fiddle unless it is participatory and organised.

The writer is director, Centre for Environment & Food Security, Delhi