The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, more popularly known as NREGA, has come under sharp focus since the results of the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections were announced. While many commentators have attributed the UPA’s return to power to the success of NREGA, some are still skeptical about its efficacy and impact.

Irrespective of the degree of its success, most experts agree that for NREGA to be more effective in the current economic context, it needs to be re-engineered; both (a) by the policy makers at the level of programme design and (b) by the implementation machinery at the level of actual delivery. This assumes importance when one considers the mammoth size of the programme — it is probably the largest-ever public employment initiative anywhere in the world. For the purpose of the current discussion, we will restrict ourselves to the challenges in re-engineering the programme design.

At the design level, the two main criticisms of NREGA have been that (a) the quality of assets created under the programme leaves much to be desired; and (b) by having only unskilled physical labour as its mainstay, there is no incentive for rural youth to acquire higher skills; rather it acts as a disincentive. Both these criticisms need to be tested on an objective basis.

Here is the place we need to take a leaf out of the private sector book: we should make changes in programme design (interventions) not based on anecdotal evidence — not even based on post-facto reviews by the so-called experts — but based on randomised evaluation. This would help us arrive at a measurement of the efficacy of such interventions, in an objective and rational manner.

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