Nitish`s pet project: Corruption-free

It is Chief Minister Nitish Kumars pet project and he is awaiting the results breathlessly. Bihar is likely to become the first state in India to offer the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGP) to people through a biometric test.

Between June 5 and 7, a Karnataka company selected on the basis of a recommendation by IL&FS and Bihar Electronics Corporation Limited (BELTRON) will conduct workshops at a panchayat on a pilot basis to work out a cost-benefit analysis for deploying biometrics to plug the leakages in NREGP.

Put simply, this means a low-cost machine will be able to detect the fingerprint of an NREGP beneficiary and will maintain a log for the number of days he has worked and the payment he is entitled to. It will once again record that it is the registered worker who has collected the payment and not some fictitious person.

I know it is not my money it is the money coming from the Centre. But that is not enough reason for us to let it fall through the crevices. There is no point lying about it there is a lot of leakage in NREGP. How to check it has become an obsession with me. It seems to me that biometrics is one way to correct it. So we are conducting an experiment, said Kumar.

Non-existent muster rolls, no job cards, job cards but no work these are only some of the problems with NREGP which is one of the most crucial programmes for Bihar.

Not all districts of the state were covered so we decided to extend the programme to all districts using our own resources last year. This year, the Centre will help us out with money. But as a programme, it is loaded with the possibility of corruption. I am determined to see this is removed, said Kumar.

In fact, last month, when one of the main motivators behind the programme, economist Jean Dreze met Kumar, the CM told him that the programme had been launched without adequate thinking on how the money would actually reach the poor.

He told me about the success story of the programme in one district in Chhattisgarh. I said to him: Aa gaye na aap ek district par (You are down to using one district as a success story), said Kumar. He added that if the biometrics experiment succeeds it could be a valuable substitute for a voter identity card as well.

Kumar feels there are conceptual problems with NREGP as well. Logically, the programme is meant to create assets between two panchayats or two Zilla Parishads. But panchayats think: Why not just create the assets near our village, better still, near the mukhias house. This is where distortions come in. Also, too many agencies are supposed to sanction the kind of programmes you can take up. This makes the whole process complex and bureaucratic.

In Bihar, more than one crore people are below the poverty line. So the state is now undertaking a long drawn enumeration before making a claim for more NREGP funds. Right now, foodgrains are given to cover only 65 lakh BPL families under the programme, a figure Kumar contests.