New Delhi, Dec 17 (IANS) Parliament Thursday approved a bill renaming a flagship rural jobs scheme after Mahatma Gandhi.
Rural Development Minister C.P. Joshi sought to shift the onus of the deficiencies of the Rs.39,000 crore Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) on the 250,000 panchayats in the states, regardless of which political party was in power.

“It is our honest effort to rededicate the implementation of the scheme as per Mahatma Gandhi’s teachings and ideologies,” he said.

He wondered if there was a “conspiracy to give the scheme a bad name”.

He said that “only” Rs.2-3 crores of bungling had been discovered in the schame but admitted that of the Rs.346 crore released under the scheme in his Bhilwara constituency in Rajasthan, Rs.40 lakhs had been siphoned off.

Earlier, member after member reminded the government that drastic steps would have to be be taken if Mahatma Gandhi’s name was not to be sullied.

On Tuesday, the government had admitted to huge slippages in the scheme and informed parliament that only 14 percent of its target of providing 100 days of work in a year had been met.

“We are committed to providing 100 days of work in a year to one member of every rural household in a year under NREGS. But in 2008-09, we could achieve only 14 percent of the target,” Joshi said during question hour in the Rajya Sabha.

“We find that in rural areas, people don’t want to do manual work. So we are attempting to change manual work to skilled work,” he added.

Responding to a supplementary, Joshi denied that West Bengal was owed Rs.700 crore under the scheme.

“In April, we raised the wage to Rs.100 a day and provided the necessary money to those states that asked for this. West Bengal has asked for Rs.87 a day,” he said.