[Reader-list] Rural development-Indian babu style

[Yazad Jal]

http://www1.ndtv.com/columns/showcolumns.asp?id=810

F for Failure
Sreenivasan Jain

Wednesday, February 6, 2002:

Not very long ago, a team of about 40 accountants from the Rural Development
Ministry left for a visit that would take them to 30 districts in 13 Indian
states. Their mission: an internal audit of some of India’s biggest rural
development projects: IRDP, DWACRA, JRY, IAY, EAS. To an outsider, these
acronyms reveal little of the ambitious sweep, at least in conception, of
these multi-crore schemes, some of which have been in place for almost 30
years.

The men and women of the Ministry began their investigations at the offices
of the District Rural Development Authority, or DRDA, meant to be, at least
on paper, the organization that receives and then distributes money to the
very poor to build low-cost homes, create jobs, train women, pay out
pensions to the old and destitute or to pregnant women.