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Free food after free wages: UPA's opium war II

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Don't give them fish, teach them fishing is an age old saying that our political leaders seem to ignore willfully. Why? Keeping India's rural masses poor, ignorant and dole dependent helps politicians rule them while teaching them to fish will make them think independently . Any commodity given free even as a dole devalues the commodity besides making the receiver dole dependent just like the opium dependent addict. MNREGA that spends over 40,000 crores ($8 billion) of national wealth on rural wages annually, without creating rural assets was the first injection of opium that the UPA I gave to the India's rural masses. If the UPA had wanted they could within their nine years of rule, have easily have connected MNREGA to any localized asset building activity like providing MNREGA registered labour for the National Highway Authority of India. However if people started really using their own hands for livelihood why would they depend on the hand of the Indian National Congress?


Besides that would have needed building rural schools at the district levels for say operating a bull dozer, a road roller, earthmoving equipment and even digging wells. UPA could make it mandatory for the NHAI contractors to provide one well on either side of the road for every mile like the old age maharaja's of India once did. However pumping money into real assets makes it more pilfer proof and difficult to siphon off. An April 2013 investigation by Bloomberg news establishes that ghost workers, the dead, the old and disabled were unknowingly part of the embezzlement scheme that included fake projects and over billing nearly a third of the MNREGA payouts for the rural jobs programs. Much of that would have flowed into the politicians coffers both at the centre and the states.


Skill building activity on the other hand would have made the people independent and hit at the basic concept of vote for cash scheme. The core idea behind the MNREGA was keep to the rural masses under a leash through dole dependent measures. So UPA's skill building activity program remained largely on paper and distinctly removed from the rural masses and spendings under MNREGA continued to be siphoned off into the politicians pockets. Skill building activity would have needed effort in integrating people, skills and employment and also resulted in a form of output. That would perhaps have stopped the massive leakage of funds that ultimately ends up in the pockets of politicians and administrators that run such dole schemes.


However taking a leaf from the opium addiction theory introduced by the British in rural China during the Anglo Chinese opium war's of 1840's the UPA kept up spending under MNREGA. They understood that if people did not remain useless and desperately poor they would not remain slaves to the Congress legacy. The MNREGA was after all a double benefit deal for the politicians with a win win situation for the UPA. A large part of the dole money would ultimately leak from the system and flow into the politician and administrator's coffers. The money that did not leak and found way to the rural masses would keep them dole dependent and result in vote inflow to the UPA. There was no incentive for the rural poor to do productive work anymore in the farms. They could directly register themselves for MNREGA dole and get away from output oriented activity. It was dangerous for a nation that has remained devastatingly poor for more than 60 years after independence to make its own population dole dependent. However the UPA after winning one election spend huge amount of scarce national resources to leverage the next ambitious dole program through Aadhar or the UID scheme that would be the food security bill, now being introduced as an ordinance. The food security bill would provide minimum food for India's uneducated poor for free, further reducing the incentive to work for a living. It is UPA 's opium war II for India's rural masses to keep them useless and dependent not on their own hands but on the hand symbol that provides them their daily dose of opium through MNREGA and the Food Security Act.


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