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