Not even the Marxist parties could object to an altered and expanded version of the employment guarantee scheme since there are no ideological problems involved. They have stalled privatisation and reforms in insurance and labour policies on the grounds that they are ‘anti-people’ but there can be nothing anti-people about giving semi-literate, desperately poor people training in a skill during their 100 days of employment.

For my TV series I interviewed some of our most intelligent and important business leaders and asked each of them what they think are the three economic reforms that still need to be done. Nearly everyone mentioned education as one of the three. And, nearly everyone agreed that some form of technical education, even just the teaching of a basic skill, was vital. The problem we face is not unemployment, they said, but ‘employability’. In its present form the employment guarantee scheme is a form of charity that serves to keep very poor people very poor forever. This is not a solution and what we need are solutions.